


Black Holes And Revelations

by Jiangyin



Category: Hanson, Lifeline (Video Game 2015)
Genre: Camp Nanowrimo, Gen, NaNoWriMo, The Greens can eat a dick
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-19
Updated: 2020-04-24
Packaged: 2020-06-27 23:48:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 36,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19800304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jiangyin/pseuds/Jiangyin
Summary: After the starshipVariacrashlands on a deserted moon en route to Tau Ceti VI, it's up to Meredith to help astronaut cadet Taylor find his way home.Written for Camp NaNoWriMo, July 2019.





	1. Prologue :: Across The Universe

**Author's Note:**

> I've wanted to write this story for _years_ , ever since I came across the first _Lifeline_ game as a free iOS App Store download in early 2016. And being as I'm primarily a Hanson fanfic writer, it made sense to me to write this fic as a Hanson/ _Lifeline_ crossover. It will eventually encompass _Lifeline_ , _Lifeline: Silent Night_ and _Lifeline: Halfway To Infinity_ , with a couple of changes to the plot and characters of _Halfway To Infinity_ , and is based on my playthroughs of these three games. The title comes from a lyric in the song _Starlight_ by Muse.
> 
> For anyone who might be interested in listening to the music that's inspiring me as I write, you can find the Spotify playlist for this fic [here](https://spoti.fi/36U5KDc).
> 
> A huge thank you to Kris, Crystal, Maria, Sam, Ciara, Brittany, Kelsey, Ine, Melissa, Jennifer and Dahlia for encouraging me and my writing. I love you guys. <3

### Prologue :: Across The Universe

_Sounds of laughter, shades of earth are ringing_  
_Through my open ears, inciting and inviting me_  
_Limitless undying love which shines around me_  
_Like a million suns and calls me on and on_  
_Across the universe_

_Across The Universe_ – The Beatles

* * *

“Up and at ‘em folks!”

The bright, glaring lights of the Operations Centre’s crew dormitory as they snapped on overhead, coupled with Captain Aya’s loud, skull-piercing voice, was all it took to jolt Taylor awake. All around him the other crew members of the mission to Tau Ceti IV were waking up, their low grumbles and muttered complaints about the assault on their senses filling the narrow room.

“Hey kid.”

Taylor paused in pushing his blankets back and looked over at the next bed. Antoine was already half-dressed, his regulation coverall with its mission patch on the right shoulder and American flag on the left pulled up to his waist.

“Yeah?”

“You good? Long trip ahead of us.”

‘Long trip ahead’ was a serious understatement. Until the trip to Florida in preparation for this mission, the furthest Taylor had ever travelled was nearly 1500 miles to California for college – a trip that he’d always made by road, never by air. This journey was so much more daunting – they would be travelling trillions of miles away from Earth, to a world that no human being had ever set foot on before. As much as he was looking forward to it, knowing that home would be so far away was a sobering thought.

“Yeah, I’m good,” Taylor replied. “It’s just…” He picked at his blankets. “It’s a long way from home, that’s all.”

“No kidding.” Antoine gave Taylor a smile, one that Taylor did his best to mirror, and clapped him on the shoulder. “Come on, up you get. I’ll see you in the ready room.”

“See you there.”

He was halfway down the corridor leading from the crew dormitory to the ready room when a hand caught him by the shoulder, stopping him in his tracks. “Call for you in the comms room, Hanson,” the captain said. “Make it quick, okay?”

“Yes’m,” Taylor replied. The temptation to snap off a quick salute was particularly strong, but he held back.

The captain studied him for a little while, before offering him a smile. “Everything will be all right, Taylor,” she assured him. “Go on, off you go. We’ll be in the ready room when you’re done.”

The sight that greeted him on the wall screen in the comms room made him smile properly for the first time in what felt like days. Crowded around what he guessed was his father’s video camera, which had been set up on the back porch at home, was his whole family – his parents, his brothers and his sisters. His parents were sitting on the cane lounge that had been on the back porch his whole life, with Jessica and Avery sitting on either side of them and Zoë on his mother’s lap. Isaac, Zac and Joshua were sitting on the floor of the porch in front of the lounge.

“I miss you guys,” he said once he’d liberated a chair from one of the computer terminals and settled into it.

“We miss you too,” his mother said. “How are you feeling today?”

“Nervous,” he admitted. “This…” He let out a quiet, almost strangled laugh. “This is a huge deal. First member of the Hanson family to go to space and everything.”

“ _And_ on NASA’s first manned mission outside of the solar system at that,” his father added. “We’re very proud of you, Tay.”

At his father’s words, Taylor felt his face beginning to heat up, and he ducked his head a little. “Thanks Dad.”

“When are you comin’ home Tay?” Zoë asked. She sounded so hopeful that Taylor almost couldn’t bear it. “Are you gonna be home for Christmas?”

“Not for Christmas,” he replied. “But I bought you guys some presents and wrapped them up before I left to come down here, so it’ll almost be like I’m there. Okay?”

Zoë seemed to consider this for a little while. “Okay,” she answered at last, before blowing a kiss at the camera. Taylor automatically raised a hand to catch it and pressed his fingers to his mouth. “I love you Tay.”

“Love you too, Zo,” he replied. “Always will.”

“All right kids, time to get ready for school,” his mother said. At those words Taylor’s younger siblings headed off out of view, farewells and ‘good luck Taylor’s ringing out as they went.

“I should probably head off too,” Taylor said, doing his best not to sound reluctant but failing miserably. “They’re waiting for me in the ready room and I don’t want to hold things up more than I probably have already.”

“We love you,” his mother said. “And just remember, you’ll be home before you know it.”

He managed another smile at this. “Love you too, Mom. See you in a few months.”

The captain looked up from her tablet as Taylor stepped into the ready room, offering him a smile that he quickly returned. Around the room some of the other crew members were readying themselves for launch – Colby was tidying her halo of curls into a tight bun at the back of her head, Trotter was speaking to someone on a vidscreen, and Adair was reading something on his own tablet. On the wall nearest the exit to the world outside was a long rack holding the crew’s IEVA suits, with the helmets hanging on a separate rack. Colby offered Taylor a smile as he sat down next to her.

“All good?” she asked, and Taylor nodded.

“Yeah, just said goodbye to my family.” He picked at the cuffs of his coverall. “Colby, what if-”

“Hey, we’ll have none of that,” Colby admonished gently. “We’re not going to waste any time worrying about ‘what if’s. Focus on what is. Okay?”

“Yeah, okay.”

Just as the last crew members took their seats, the captain spoke.

“All right, ladies and gents – and believe me, I use those words _very_ loosely,” she said, causing a wave of chuckles to ripple around the room. “Just a little bit of housekeeping before we set off.” She tapped at the screen of her tablet, bringing up a holo of the United States. She pointed at Florida with the bright red beam of a laser pointer that she took from a pocket. “This is us, right here. We launch in three hours.” She tapped at the screen of her tablet again and the map shimmered out of view, bringing up the Solar System. Earth spun lazily right in the middle of the display. “Our journey will take us through the Herschel and Kuiper belts, out of our Solar System and onward to Tau Ceti IV.” The holo zoomed out, showing a brief glimpse of the Milky Way, before zooming back in again to their final destination. “It will take us six weeks to reach Tau Ceti IV, and six weeks to return home again. We will have three weeks there to explore, during which we will hopefully confirm that it is within the habitable zone for its parent star, and therefore capable of supporting life.”

With one final tap at the screen of her tablet, the holo switched off. Aya set the tablet down on the table to her right. “Now, as I’m sure you’re all very aware, this mission is part of NASA’s Education Outreach Program. We are hosting a sophomore Life Sciences student from UCLA, Taylor Hanson.” Taylor gave a little wave as everyone else in the room looked over at him. “He will be conducting a number of experiments during his time with us. You’re all welcome to include him in your own work, but his studies come first.

“Lastly, in addition to our outreach work, we have partnered with the Lifeline Communication and Support Network in the first off-world test of their Lifeline support app. You will all have access to this technology during the outbound journey and our time on Tau Ceti IV, as well as during the trip home, and I encourage you all to make good use of it.”

Aya swept her gaze around the room, alighting on each of the members of her crew. Each and every one of them looked determined – and in the case of their guest, a little nervous as well. “Does anyone have any questions?” she asked, and when nobody spoke or raised a hand she gave a decisive nod. “Excellent. In that case, suit up everyone. We leave for the launch complex in half an hour.”

* * *

They were a week away from Tau Ceti IV when all hell broke loose.

An ear-piercing siren woke Taylor during the _Varia_ ’s sleep cycle. It was the loudest thing he had ever heard, even louder than the tornado sirens back home – it rattled his teeth in his head and sent a ripple of fear down his back. Out of instinct (and also because the captain had told him to, so he knew what to do when the different sirens sounded) he counted the siren blasts, mouthing numbers as they went off.

One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven.

The seven short sirens were followed by one last, long siren that lasted for what felt like an eternity, after which came the most terrifying words he’d ever heard in his life.

“ _Abandon ship. I repeat, abandon ship. Drop whatever you are doing, suit up and get to an escape pod. This is not a drill. I repeat, this is not a drill._ ”

He didn’t even hesitate. He jumped down from his bunk, wincing when he landed awkwardly, and quickly changed into his IEVA suit. He snatched up his helmet before sprinting out of the crew quarters. “Colby!” he yelled as he ran down the corridor. “ _Colby!_ ”

“Taylor, what the hell are you doing?” Colby called out as Taylor reached the _Varia_ ’s evacuation area. It was already beginning to fill with thick, dark smoke, through which Taylor could see that the nearest wall was lined with escape pods. “Get in an escape pod _now_ , goddamnit!”

“Not without you!” Taylor yelled back.

Colby grabbed Taylor by his shoulders. “Yes, without me,” she snapped, the look in her eyes and the tone of her voice silencing any protests that Taylor might have wanted to make. “Your parents trusted me to look after you, and that’s exactly what I’m doing. If I get out of this alive and you don’t, they’ll kill me.” She held out a hand. “Give me your helmet.”

“They wouldn’t kill you,” Taylor said as Colby took his helmet from him.

“Yeah, well, let’s not test that, okay?” She lowered the helmet down over Taylor’s head, lined it up with the fastenings on his IEVA suit, and locked it into place. A little green light blinked on as soon as the clamps were secured. “Can you hear me?” she asked, her voice sounding a little staticky in the helmet’s speaker, and Taylor nodded. “Can you breathe okay?”

He took a careful breath, one that to his relief wasn’t filled with smoke, and gave Colby a quick thumbs-up.

“Good.” Colby slammed an elbow into the panel next to the door of the nearest escape pod. “Get your ass in there.”

“Colby-” he tried to protest.

“ _Now_ , Taylor!”

The very last thing Taylor saw as the escape pod’s door slid closed behind him was Colby running back into the smoke that filled the _Varia_. The clamps holding the escape pod in place disengaged, with the force from the firing of the pod’s thrusters a minute or so later sending Taylor slamming hard into the opposite wall.

And everything went black.


	2. Part One :: Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to **nearsightedwaddledee** and Anon for leaving kudos on the prologue. <3
> 
> From this chapter forward until some undecided point in Part 3, just about all dialogue between Taylor and Meredith is taken from the games and has either been left as-is or has been rewritten so it flows better with the story. The same applies to any descriptions from Taylor's POV.

### Part One :: Bad Moon Rising

_I see the bad moon a-rising_   
_I see trouble on the way_   
_I see earthquakes and lightning_   
_I see bad times today_

_Bad Moon Rising_ – Creedence Clearwater Revival

* * *

### Chapter 1

> _Dear Ms. West,_
> 
> _Thank you for applying to volunteer with the Lifeline Communication and Support Network. I am pleased to inform you that your application has been accepted. You may download and install the Lifeline app on your mobile device at your leisure._
> 
> _Your login details are:_
> 
> _Username: mere.west  
>  Password: MKW050681_
> 
> _Please keep these login details in a safe place. Your password has been encrypted and cannot be retrieved._
> 
> _Thank you again for joining the Lifeline Communication and Support Network. We appreciate your service._
> 
> _Kind regards,_
> 
> _Liesel Barnes  
>  Lifeline Recruitment_

“Hey Mere?”

Meredith looked up from her phone at the doorway of her bedroom. Leaning against the doorframe was her roommate, looking as if she’d just got home from a night out on the tiles.

“Yeah?”

“What’re you doing?”

“You know that thing I applied to join?”

Quinn squinted a little, an expression Meredith recognised as the one her roommate adopted when she was thinking. “The Lifeline thing?”

“Yeah, the Lifeline thing.” Meredith tapped out of her inbox and brought up her phone’s app store, and navigated through to her wishlist. “I just got an email – they’ve accepted me as a volunteer.”

“Oh, nice! Good one Mere.” Quinn grinned, one that Meredith returned. “Can I come in?”

“Yeah, sure you can.” Meredith nodded to her bed. “How was your date?” she asked once Quinn was settled cross-legged on the bed, leaning against the wall.

Quinn gave Meredith an almost dreamy smile. “It was so good. We hiked up to the observatory and did a bit of stargazing. She bought me ice cream afterward.”

“That’s great, Quinn.” By now Meredith had found the Lifeline app in her wishlist, and had installed it on her phone. She waved her phone at Quinn. “I’m going to see if I can find someone to chat to, if you still want to hang around.”

“Oh, I’m not going anywhere.” As if to make her point, Quinn grabbed one of the pillows off Meredith’s bed and dumped it in her lap. “Well, come on then. Find someone to chat to.”

“I won’t have any comments from the peanut gallery,” Meredith warned, and Quinn made a show of zipping her lips shut.

Meredith didn’t have long to wait to find someone to talk to. As soon as she had logged into the app, it connected and a message popped up on her phone’s screen.

**[ incoming communication ]**

**[ establishing connection ]**

**[ receiving message ]**

**Hello? Is this thing working? Can anyone read me?**

“What the _hell?_ ” she whispered. “The fuck is this?”

“Mere?” Quinn asked.

Meredith held her phone out to Quinn. “I’m not sure this is how the app’s meant to work. Pretty sure _I’m_ supposed to find someone to talk to, not the other way around!”

“Are you going to answer them?” Quinn asked.

“What?”

Quinn nodded at Meredith’s phone. “They clearly need someone to talk to. You gonna answer them?”

“Yeah, gimme a sec.” Meredith quickly tapped out an answer. **_I read you._**

The reply that Meredith got, while only just pixels on a screen, was clearly relieved. **YES! Thank you, thank you, thank you…**

**_Are you okay?_ **

**Yeah I’m fine. It’s just been hours since I was able to talk to anyone.**

“Who are you talking to?”

Meredith shrugged a little. “Dunno. Haven’t asked them their name yet.” **_Who are you?_** she asked.

**Right, sorry. Probably should have started with that.** Meredith could almost see them smiling apologetically. **I’m Taylor. I’m…I was an astronaut on the Varia.**

**_What’s the Varia?_** she asked. “Quinn, look up something called the _Varia_ for me? V-A-R-I-A.”

“On it.” Almost as an afterthought, Quinn added, “Why does that sound familiar?”

**It’s – fuck, not IS. It was a starship, crew of less than a dozen. Mission to see if a planet called Tau Ceti IV could support human life.**

**_That’s exciting._ **

**Yeah, it was. Everything was going fine as far as I knew, and we were due to get there in six days. Only…**

**_Only what?_ **

**I don’t know what happened, if we went off-course somehow or what. All I know is that we crashed on some moon somewhere. I don’t know where it is.**

Meredith raised an eyebrow at this. “You don’t know? How the fuck can you not _know?_ ” she asked, not expecting an answer.

She got one anyway.

**Why don’t I know? Why don’t I have this sector, hell the entire goddamn GALAXY memorised, like any astronaut worth a damn should? BECAUSE I’M A FUCKING STUDENT, OKAY?**

“Whoa. Speech recognition. Didn’t expect that.”

**Yep.**

“Okay, so how does a student get onto a mission into outer space?”

**Won a competition. Got picked out of, I don’t know, thousands of science students. I was running experiments in zero-G on rats and lichens and shit like that. Was supposed to be with a supervisor at all times, no matter what. I can pretty safely guess that crash landing on a goddamn MOON wasn’t covered anywhere in my student handbook!**

“Okay, okay, calm down. It’s all right.”

In her mind’s eye Meredith could see Taylor pinching the bridge of their nose in what had to be frustration – and she wasn’t entirely sure she blamed them. **Sorry, sorry. I’m just really freaked out right now. We went over a shitload of different protocols for what to do during potential disasters when I was in training for this mission, but a spaceship crash on some deserted moon in the middle of fucking NOWHERE definitely wasn’t one of them.** There was a brief pause. **But it’s okay. I’ll be okay. Just have to find the others, they’ll know what to do. They’ll be able to let Houston know that we crashed.** Another pause. **Only…**

“What?”

**What if nobody else survived the crash? What if I’m it?**

* * *

“Oh _shite_ ,” Taylor whispered. “I can’t be the only one who survived. I _can’t_ be.”

He’d been sitting against the side of the escape pod on the hard, rocky ground for hours, ever since he’d woken up to find that he’d somehow managed to survive the crash. The pod was a little scorched from what he figured had to be re-entry, but it was otherwise intact. What he could see of the pod’s chute was torn and similarly scorched, the fabric pitted with burn marks.

**Taylor, breathe. Just breathe. Can you do that for me?**

“Yes. Yes, I can do that.” He took a deep breath and let it out shakily, the sound echoing inside his helmet. “Breathing. I’m breathing.”

**Good. Keep doing that. Now, aside from the whole freaked out bit, are you all right?**

He considered this for a little while. “Let’s see now. The ship I was on crashed on some moon in the middle of freaking _nowhere_. Nobody except for you is hailing on this or any other frequency – and believe me, I tried quite a few of those. And so far I haven’t seen any survivors aside from me, who just so happens to be _the least prepared person in existence for this sort of emergency!_ ” He let out a quiet, nearly hysterical laugh. “But I somehow managed to get out of this whole mess with nothing worse than a stubbed toe, so things could be worse.”

**What do you mean, least prepared?**

“This sort of thing _definitely_ wasn’t on any science exam I ever took in high school. And I was in Advanced Placement!”

**Ooh, we have a smart kid on our hands. Impressive.**

“Right.” He scoffed a little at this. “Smart kid with a sore toe.”

**Sorry about the toe, Einstein.**

He let out another laugh, this one not quite as hysterical as the last. “Yeah, well, I have a habit of using sarcasm as a weapon, at least according to other people. And I’m not armed with anything else right now. So, you know…let’s just hope that if there’s some little green men waiting behind my escape pod to jump out and attack me the second I decide to move, they’re vulnerable to ironic comments and a _whole_ lotta eye-rolling.” He grinned a little at this, even though the person he was talking to – his Lifeline – couldn’t see it.

**That’s the spirit.**

“Thanks.” He eased himself to his feet, stifling a groan as his muscles and joints protested. “Anyway, why don’t I tell you what I can see from here? Maybe you can give me an idea of where I should go.”

**Sounds good to me.**

“Right, so my escape pod came down in the middle of a desert or something like that. White rock with lots of cracks in it. And there’s a dirty great peak a few miles away by the looks of things – it’s almost perfectly symmetrical, so I don’t think it’s _entirely_ natural. Compass on my IEVA suit – fancy name for a spacesuit – says the peak’s northeast of me.”

He turned around so that he was facing the crash site. “And in the opposite direction, south and southwest to be exact, there’s two columns of black smoke from what I’m assuming are the two pieces of the _Varia_.” He paused. “Best case scenario, it’s _only_ in two pieces.”

**Which one looks closer? Crash site or the peak?**

“The crash site. So you think I should look there first?”

**Yep. The peak can probably wait.**

“Okay, yeah. That makes sense. There might be other survivors at the crash. Fingers crossed.” Almost as an afterthought, he added, “It’s not actually possible to cross your fingers in an IEVA suit, so you’re gonna have to take my word for it.”

**Fingers crossed here too.**

“Appreciate it. At the very least, I know there’s stuff there I can use. Rations and shit like that, so I’m not gonna starve anytime soon.” He rolled his shoulders a little, wincing a little when he felt the joints crack. “All right. I’m heading south now. It looks like the crash site’s at least an hour away, so I’ll let you know when I get there.”

**Okay.** After a second or so, his Lifeline added, **I’m Meredith, by the way. Girl. What about you – girl, guy, non-binary?**

“Oh, um, guy.” He started heading for the crash site. “Nice to meet you, Meredith.”

**You too, Taylor.**

* * *

“I _knew_ it sounded familiar!”

Meredith looked up at the sound of Quinn’s triumphant shout. Quinn looked very pleased with herself, the biggest grin Meredith had ever seen outside of _Alice In Wonderland_ on her face. She was holding her phone up in the air, like it was a baseball she’d caught. “What sounds familiar?”

“The _Varia_! It got mentioned in the student newspaper ages ago. I dug into the archives and found an article about it.” Quinn cleared her throat. “‘Life Sciences sophomore Taylor Hanson has been selected out of thousands of science students nationwide to join the crew of the _Varia_ , NASA’s first manned mission beyond the boundaries of our Solar System. The mission will be investigating the planet Tau Ceti VI and its potential for supporting human life.’”

“He goes to the same school as us?”

“Yep!”

“Talk about a small world.”

“Mmm.” Quinn stretched her arms out above her head before climbing down off Meredith’s bed. “I’m gonna go see if I can get a few hours’ sleep before class. See you when I surface.”

“See you.”

After Quinn left, the door snicking quietly closed behind her, Meredith pulled up Firefox on her laptop and found the article her roommate had dug up. Accompanying it was a colour photograph of a young man with a bright smile, dark blonde hair pulled back into a neat ponytail, and the brightest blue eyes that Meredith had ever seen. The photo’s caption named him as _Taylor Hanson_.

He was so young. The article didn’t say how old he was, but the description of him being a sophomore was a decent enough clue. He reminded Meredith of her younger brother – and if Fabian was the one stranded on a nameless moon, she knew that she would want someone to do everything in their power to get him back home.

A couple of hours later, while Meredith was doing some of her readings for class, her phone chimed at her. She put her iPad down on the bed beside her and unlocked her phone to find a new message from Taylor.

**Holy SHIT. I have no idea how long I’ve been walking but my legs feel all shaky. If I don’t get there soon I think they’re going to give out from under me.**

“It’s been about two hours,” Meredith replied.

**Fucking hell. I could have sworn the crash site looked so much closer than this.**

She let out a quiet chuckle. “Feel like a chat? I could do with a break from study.”

**YES PLEASE. Anything to keep my mind off this interminable fucking walk.** Taylor’s next words seemed inquisitive. **What are you studying?**

“Communication. I want to get into social work, and a Comms degree sounded like a decent starting point. If I pass all my classes I’ll graduate next year. What about you?”

**Bachelor of Science, though you probably figured that out already. Major’s in Ecology, Behaviour and Evolution. I haven’t decided what I want to do after college yet.**

“You’ll figure it out. You have plenty of time yet. Hell it took me until my junior year to figure out what I wanted to do after graduation.” Meredith picked her iPad up and tapped her PDF reader’s save icon. “Mind if I ask a bit of a thorny question?”

This time he sounded very wary, and Meredith wasn’t sure she entirely blamed him. **I suppose.**

“How’d you survive the crash?”

He didn’t say anything for a while. **I was asleep. Woke up when the alarm went off and Captain Aya ordered us to evacuate. Colby got my helmet on me and shoved me into an escape pod – she saved my life, basically. Last time I saw her, she was running back into the ship to see if she could help somehow. Blacked out right after the pod’s engine fired up, and when I came to I was here on this fucking moon.**

“Do you want to talk about her? Colby, I mean.”

**You don’t mind?**

“Hell no.”

**Thanks. I appreciate it. I think it might help a bit, actually.** There was more silence from Taylor, but Meredith didn’t push him to talk – she figured he was probably gathering his thoughts. **Colby was…I guess she was like the mother of the group. Reminded me a lot of my own mom, really. She was the nicest and the smartest of us all. Like…she didn’t show off how smart she was, but if something broke then she’d know how to fix it. Even though half the time the answer turned out to be duct tape.**

Meredith snickered a bit at this. “Even on a starship?”

**A multi-billion-dollar starship at that.**

“Oh good Lord.”

**Took the words right outta my mouth. But anyway…Colby, she was nice and sweet enough that she never made any of us feel stupid. I can’t tell you how much I appreciated it.**

“I wish I could have met her. She sounds wonderful.”

**She really was. And I know it’s probably wishful thinking, but I’m hoping like hell that Colby made it through this utter nightmare alive. I mean, okay, I hope everyone did. Obviously I’m hoping for that. But I’m hoping extra hard that she did.**

“I hope so too.” Meredith studied the screen of her phone for a little while. “Thanks for sharing, Taylor.”

**No, I should be thanking you for listening. So. Thank you. That felt…well, normal. Like I was telling my new friend about my old friend.**

Meredith smiled. “You’re very welcome.”

**And hey, if I do manage to somehow find a way off this effing rock and get home, maybe we can go get coffee sometime. I’m buying.**

“It’s a deal.”

* * *

By the time the crash site finally came into view, Taylor was ready to collapse out of sheer exhaustion. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d walked so far without anything resembling a break. As soon as he’d stopped walking and had caught his breath, and once he’d checked that the atmosphere was breathable, he released the clamps on his helmet and lifted it off his head. “Meredith?” he asked as he set his helmet down on the ground beside his feet and pulled his hair out of its ponytail, running gloved fingers through it. “Meredith, are you there?”

**Yep, I’m here.**

“I’m at the crash site. Jesus effing _Christ_ that was a hike and a half.”

**What’s it look like?**

“Like I thought it might – the _Varia_ came down in two big pieces. Must have cracked in half when it hit the atmosphere.”

**There’s an atmosphere there? On a moon?**

“Yeah, and it’s breathable.”

**You don’t think that’s a bit weird?**

He considered this for a moment. “A bit, yeah. But I’m so not complaining, because I finally got to take my helmet off. Which feels fucking _amazing_ , by the way.”

**I bet! What else can you see?**

“Aside from an absolute shitload of white rock?”

Meredith’s next words seemed amused. **Yes, Taylor. Aside from that.**

“Just checking.” He shaded his eyes with a hand. “There’s a tonne of debris scattered around the two halves of the ship. Makes it look post-apocalyptic and absolutely terrifying. And yes, in case you’re wondering I’m pretty damn terrified right now, so it’s working.”

**Easy, Taylor. Deep breaths.**

“Still breathing. Don’t worry.” He studied the crash site, trying to gauge the distance between the two halves of the _Varia_. “The flight deck came down pretty far from the crew quarters. Looks like it’s closest, though. I might have a look there first.”

**Just be careful, okay?**

“I will.” He quickly gathered his hair up and tied it back again, then bent down to pick up his helmet before heading for the wreckage of the flight deck. As he got closer he could clearly see how much damage the crash had caused, and he sucked in a shocked breath. What remained of the front half of the _Varia_ looked like it had flown through a meteor storm. “Holy _shit…_ ”

**Taylor?**

“It, um…” He let out a quiet, almost hysterical laugh. “It looks like hell. Which, okay, I expected. Just a shock seeing it up close.” He ran a hand over the nearest section of the wreckage, instinctively wincing as his fingertips skirted over jagged edges. “Most of the heat shielding looks like it got stripped off during entry.” He stepped inside the flight deck. “The exterior of the ship seems to have taken the worst of the damage though – most of the instrumentation looks like it’s pretty much intact.” He cleared some of the debris off one of the crew seats and set his helmet down on it. “I’m gonna poke around in this mess, see what I can find.”

**What are you looking for, specifically?**

“Not sure. I’ll know what it is when I find it.” He crouched down and started sifting through the mess of wires, strips of metal and fluttery bits of cloth and paper that covered the floor of the flight deck. “Now, let’s see what I can dig up…”

As he pushed aside a crew seat that had been wrenched free of its moorings so that he could get at the bridge, he found something he wasn’t even searching for.

“ _Score!_ Meredith, we are in _business!_ ” he yelled triumphantly, and let out a cheer as he punched the air.

**What did you find?**

“I found a couple of things. First off, I found the ship’s distress beacon.” He gave the beacon a quick once-over as he straightened up. “And not that I know much about them, but from the looks of things it’s totally intact.”

**That’s great news!**

“I know, right? Means I might not be stuck here forever.” He carefully set the beacon down next to his helmet. “Secondly, one of the defence turrets is still working. Other two got totalled in the crash. Which, okay, wouldn’t normally be _great_ , but there’s only one of me so it works out.”

**So you can defend yourself?**

“If need be, yep. I won’t have to rely on my arsenal of pop culture references in case any little green men around here turn out to be armed.” Right as he finished speaking reality came crashing down on him, and he let out a quietly defeated sigh. “There’s just one problem.”

**Nothing to power them with?**

“Nope. Reactor’s in the rear of the ship, and that came down separately from the flight deck. I’m fairly certain that we didn’t pack any extension cords that are long enough to bridge the distance between the two crashes. And even if we _had_ packed them, I can pretty confidently say that the reactor isn’t in good enough shape to be able to power much of anything right now.” He closed his eyes and ran a hand over his face. “I’m gonna keep digging around in the flight deck. Who knows, I might find something I can use to give them a bit of juice.”

**Good luck.**

He managed a small smile, not even caring that Meredith was too far away to see it. “Thanks. I think I’m going to need it.”

* * *

Meredith was halfway to class when her phone chimed at her, the sound overriding the Spotify playlist she was listening to – it was the alert tone for her Lifeline app. She found a bench to sit down on outside the Arts Library, paused Spotify right in the middle of an Imagine Dragons song, and opened Lifeline to find a new message in her chat history with Taylor.

**Meredith, please tell me you’re there. This is really important.**

“I’m here Taylor, what’s up?”

There was no answer for a little while, but she didn’t push Taylor to talk – at least not at first. “Taylor? Are you okay?”

**Yeah. I’m okay. It’s just…oh, effing hell.** She could imagine Taylor taking a very shuddery breath after this, as if he was trying not to break down. **I haven’t found any of the crew yet. But, um…I just found Captain Aya.**

“Oh no,” she whispered, her heart sinking.

**Yeah. There’s so much blood, Meredith…**

“Easy, Taylor. Easy. Deep breaths, okay?”

**I’m breathing, I’m breat-** He cut off suddenly, and for one long, horrible second Meredith thought something had happened to her new friend. **SHE’S NOT DEAD! HOLY SHIT SHE’S NOT DEAD!**

“No _way_ ,” Meredith breathed. “Are you absolutely sure?”

**Of course I’m fucking sure. She’s still breathing. She’s got this motherfucking huge bit of metal through her side, though. It looks like a support strut or something.** Meredith winced at this. **What do I do, Meredith? Do I leave it in or pull it out?**

“Leave it in!” she half-yelled. If there was anything she remembered from the first aid classes she’d taken in high school, it was that. “Don’t even _think_ about pulling it out, you’ll kill her.”

**Okay, yeah. Good idea.** Meredith could almost see Taylor nodding at this. **She’s not really bleeding too much right now anyway. I don’t want to make it worse. But her breathing is really shallow and kind of…rattling? That’s the best way I can think of to describe it.**

“Do you have a medkit around anywhere? At the very least you should bandage the wound so it doesn’t get infected.”

**There should be one on the flight deck somewhere. I just gotta find it. Gimme a few minutes.** He was quiet for a little while – Meredith figured he was searching for a medkit. **I’m not keeping you from anything, am I?** he asked suddenly.

“I’m supposed to be in class soon, but you’re way more important.”

**I feel special. Seriously.**

“You should. I don’t contemplate skipping class for just anyone.” As she said this an image of Taylor blushing bright red popped into her head, and she bit back a grin. “Any luck finding a medkit?”

**Not yet. I found the forward med cabinet, but it’s all scorched over and I can’t open it. I’d need a crowbar and a power drill just to have a hope of breaking it open. With any luck I’d be the one who needs patching up after that, not just the captain.**

“Damn it.”

**Yeah. There’s another cabinet in the rear of the ship though, near the crew quarters. I’ll go see if I can get into it.**

“Good luck,” she said softly, hoping the microphone on her headphones had picked up her voice, and locked her phone before resuming her walk to class.

She had just settled into her usual seat in the lecture theatre for her Thursday Communication and Identity class when her phone chimed again. It was quiet, but loud enough to startle her into nearly dropping it. She quickly silenced her phone and opened Lifeline to find a new message from Taylor.

**Effing hell. All this running between the crash sites is starting to wear me out.**

**_You could take a break_** , Meredith suggested, deciding that typing was better than speaking right now.

**Not yet. If I stop moving then Captain Aya is as good as dead. Right now for all I know, she’s all I’ve got on this stupid moon.**

**_Okay, good point. But please tell me you’ll take a break soon._ **

**You sound like my mom. But in a good way.**

**_Someone has to._** She shrugged a little as she sent those three words, even though she knew full well that Taylor couldn’t see it. **_How close to the rear of the ship are you?_**

**Like, spitting distance. Not that I WOULD spit, that’s gross. But I’m really close.** Before Meredith could respond to this, Taylor sent another message. **Oh no.**

**_Taylor?_ **

**I, um...I just found some of the crew. Wasn’t totally unexpected, but I still hoped. You know? Fucking hell…**

“Shite,” Meredith whispered.

**Sorry. Had to go throw up behind some moon rocks. But, um…I think there must have been a few crew members who were near the point where the hull broke. I can’t tell who they were or how many of them, they’re all sort of…fused to the metal, or to each other.**

**_Jesus Christ._ **

**Yeah. It…it’s not pretty. Plus I think we might have lost some of the others when the ship lost pressure.**

The next message that Taylor sent just about broke Meredith’s heart.

**I just managed to get the door to the crew quarters open. The rest of the crew’s there. Antoine, Trotter, Colby, Adair…they’re all dead.**


	3. Part One :: Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd planned to hold this chapter over until after I finished chapter 3, which hasn't happened yet. Eep. This fic is my project for NaNoWriMo this year, so I should have most of the rest of the story posted fairly soon. Fingers crossed. If nothing else it'll be the kick up the arse I need to get some work done on this fic.
> 
> If any of you also do NaNo, you can keep up with my progress **[here](https://nanowrimo.org/participants/ithendra/projects/black-holes-and-revelations)**.

### Chapter 2

“Antoine, Trotter, Colby, Adair…they’re all dead.”

They were the hardest words that Taylor had ever had to say. He’d been hoping for hours, ever since he’d woken up in the escape pod, that the entire crew had survived the crash – however remote a chance that might have been. Now, though, reality was crashing in on him.

He was alone, stranded on some nameless moon twelve light years and trillions of miles from home – and there was only one other person in the universe who knew where he was or what had happened.

**Taylor, I am so sorry.**

“It’s okay. Thought this was what might have happened.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “I…I don’t know what to do, Meredith. I don’t even know if I can keep going. They’re all gone. Every single one of them is gone, all except for me and Captain Aya.” He buried his face in his hands and let out a quiet, shuddery sigh, in an attempt to keep himself from breaking down completely. “Fucking hell. What the fuck am I going to do now?”

**You’re going to keep moving. That’s what you’re going to do. You’re still alive, and so is your captain – let’s keep it that way, yeah? You can grieve later, but right now you need to keep moving.**

“Yeah. Yeah, you’re right.” He swiped a hand over his eyes and drew in a deep breath. “Okay. I’m gonna keep looking for the rear medkit. If nothing else that should help keep my mind off things.”

**I know I’ve been saying this a lot, but good luck. Got my fingers crossed.**

“Appreciate it,” he replied with a small smile, and resumed his search.

Not even ten minutes later, in a repeat of his earlier success in finding the distress beacon, he found something else he hadn’t been looking for.

“Okay. Time to play the good news slash bad news game again,” he said as he rocked back on his heels and stared at his newest discovery – one that was so much better than a medkit any day. “You’re _never_ gonna believe this.”

**Oh, I don’t know. Try me.** A pause. **I’ll probably regret it, but give me the bad news first.**

“I couldn’t find the medkit. Got into its cabinet easy enough, but the medkit wasn’t in there.”

**Damn it.**

“Yeah. I’m thinking someone took it out before the crash but forgot to put it back when they were done with it. So it’s probably still around here somewhere.” He squinted a little, thinking. “So it’s part bad news, part good news?” he hedged.

**What’s the good news?**

“Turns out that the _Varia_ had two medical stasis pods on board. One of them’s a heap of scrap metal and therefore is zero use to me, so that’s more bad news, _but_ the good news is that other one is still intact.” Here he grinned, once again not caring that Meredith couldn’t see it. “ _And_ all its functions have a green light!”

**And you know this HOW, exactly?**

His grin got bigger. “Found a portable generator.”

**No way!**

“Oh yes. It’s small, but it’ll keep the stasis pod running for _days_. Pod isn’t going to heal the captain, but it’ll keep her stable. That’s all I care about right now.” After a second or two, he added, “I mean, what I _really_ want is for her to wake up, but right now I’ll take what I can get.”

He rose up out of his crouch and studied the stasis pod. “This thing’s going to be a monumental pain in the ass to haul all the way back to the flight deck, though. Same with the generator. Pod just on its own is as long as I am tall. And I’m not exactly short, so that’s saying something.”

**But at the same time moving the captain to the pod isn’t the best of ideas. You need to make sure she doesn’t lose any more blood than she has already, and that means she needs to stay put.**

“Yeah. That’s a good point, actually.” He frowned, thinking. “I wonder…”

**What are you thinking?**

He didn’t answer at first, instead focusing all his attention on the LCD display on the front of the pod – or, more accurately, on the row of buttons below the display. “Oh no _way_ ,” he whispered.

**Taylor, come on. I’m not a fucking mind reader.**

“It’s got a hover mode! Fuck _yes!_ ” He pressed the button that would activate the pod’s hover mode, and held his breath as he waited for it to kick in. The pod rose up off the floor with a quiet humming sound and hovered in front of him, and he let his breath out in a sigh of relief. “It’s gonna suck some extra power from the generator, but I don’t think it’ll put _too_ much of a dent in it.”

**Are you heading back to the flight deck now?**

“Yep. I’ll message you as soon as the captain’s safe and sound.”

* * *

“How’s he travelling?”

It had been a long day – one of the longest in Meredith’s recent memory. Between helping Taylor survive alone on a barren, deserted moon halfway across the galaxy, her usual Thursday class and trying not to stress over the newest assignment that Dr. Adams had dumped on everyone that afternoon, she was well and truly worn out. At the forefront of her mind was a shower and sleep.

At least, that was her plan until Quinn fell into step beside her as she left the lecture theatre.

“He’s hanging in there,” Meredith replied. “Just barely, but he’s managing.”

Quinn studied Meredith for a little while. “You look so tired,” she commented.

“Thanks for that Captain Obvious, hadn’t noticed,” Meredith retorted.

Mercifully, Meredith thought, Quinn ignored this and instead offered a bright smile. “Come on, let’s go get coffee. I’m buying.”

Ever since the two of them had met on move-in day at the beginning of freshman year, and especially since they’d become friends, their shared favourite haunt had been the Starbucks near the Health Sciences complex. Quinn ordered their coffees – her mocha frappuccino, and Meredith’s caramel macchiato – and the two of them found an empty table near the front windows. Without a word Meredith unlocked her phone, still with her and Taylor’s chat history open, and slid it across to Quinn. She didn’t say a thing as Quinn scrolled slowly through the messages that had been pinging back and forth since that morning, only getting up to retrieve their coffees when Quinn’s name was called out. By the time she returned to their table, Quinn had finished reading and was sitting back in her seat, a pensive look on her face.

“His entire crew,” Quinn said at last, and Meredith nodded. “Jesus _Christ_ _…_ ” She shook her head in seeming disbelief. “I can’t imagine going through that on my own. How has he not just gone and sat in a corner and given up?”

“He nearly did,” Meredith said between sips of her macchiato. “But you saw what I said to him.”

“You, Meredith West, are a goddamn _saint_ ,” Quinn said. She raised her frappuccino and saluted Meredith with it.

“I’m _so_ not a saint.”

“Mere, you could have told him to fuck off. You could have ignored him and left him for someone else to help. But you didn’t. You had zero idea who he was, and you still helped him.”

“Still doesn’t make me a saint. It was the decent thing to do.”

Anything either of them might have said after this was interrupted by the chiming of Meredith’s phone, and a new message from Taylor.

**She’s in, and the pod says she’s stable – blood loss is dangerous but not yet critical, and the pod’ll keep her other injuries from getting worse.** Meredith could almost hear Taylor letting out a laugh of sheer relief with his next words. **This seriously feels like a miracle.**

**_That’s good to hear. Don’t go celebrating yet, though._ **

**Yeah, yeah, of course not. Stable isn’t the same as healed. And I still need to figure out how I’m going to get us rescued so she can get some proper medical attention. I’m a science student, not a doctor. Only so much I can do.**

**_You’re doing pretty well so far though._ **

**Thanks. Now I need to figure out what I’m going to do with the rest of the crew. I mean, they’re just lying there – I can’t leave them like that.** He was quiet for a few moments. **I’m gonna head back to the other half of the ship. Taking the stasis pod and the generator with me – I’ll let you know when I get there.**

“I wish there was more we could do to help him,” Quinn said as Taylor’s busy message flashed up on the screen. Meredith locked her phone before slipping it into a pocket.

“Yeah, me too,” Meredith agreed. “How would we help him, though? Beyond texting him, I mean.”

“Call NASA?” Quinn hedged.

“We’re not only _not_ studying science, but we also have jack shit to do with the space program. They’d never believe us.”

“Find out who his professors are and get them to tell NASA or whoever what’s happened?”

“They wouldn’t believe us either.”

“Yeah, I suppose you’re right.” Quinn let out a quiet sigh. “This sucks so much.”

“You’re telling me.” Meredith checked her watch and quickly finished off the last of her macchiato. “It’s going to take him about half an hour to walk back to the rear half of his ship,” she said as she crumpled her cup up in her hand. “And I kind of want to get back home before my phone dies on me, just in case he checks in early. We should probably get going.”

“You really need a powerbank or something.” Quinn finished her own drink and took the lid off her cup to try and get at the last bits of whipped cream at the bottom. “Well, come on then. What were you thinking of grabbing for dinner?”

“Italian or something, I don’t know. I’ll think about it on the way back.”

They made it back to their residence hall on the northwest corner of campus just as the battery level of Meredith’s phone dropped to 5%. “Can you get me a Hawaiian pizza?” she asked as she found her phone’s charger and plugged it in. “I’ll pay you back.”

“Yeah, no worries. See you when I get back, yeah?”

Almost at the exact moment that Quinn left, Meredith’s phone lit up with a new message from Taylor. **After an incredibly depressing hike across an apocalyptic, barren wasteland, we arrive once again at a crew quarters lacking its crew. My life is officially bad middle-school poetry.**

“Must be pretty bad then.”

**Actually, it’s more than bad now that I think about it. It’s fucking terrible.**

Meredith let out a quiet chuckle. “What are you going to do now?”

**Way I see it, I have two options – gravedigging, or exploring the ship. I’m kinda leaning toward the former right now, purely out of respect for the crew.**

“Yeah, I think so too. Give yourself a bit of closure as well.”

**Exactly. That in itself will be a good thing, I think. Do you mind if I take a bit of private time while I bury them?**

“No, not at all. Just check back in when you’re done, yeah? I want to make sure you’re okay.”

**Yeah, of course I will.** She could almost imagine Taylor squaring his shoulders after he’d sent that message. **Well, here goes nothing.**

* * *

“Well, that’s it. Everyone’s buried.”

By some stroke of luck there had been a shovel in what remained of the _Varia_ ’s cargo hold. It had made digging graves in the hard, rocky ground a lot easier than it might have been otherwise.

Taylor leaned on the shovel as he surveyed the mounds of sand, dirt and rock that lay before him. He had briefly contemplated digging one mass grave, but had immediately dismissed it – he had far too much respect for the crew for that. Instead, he’d dug five – one each for Trotter, Antoine, Colby and Adair, and a fifth behind their graves for the crew members that had been fused together. A weight had lifted right off his shoulders as he’d finished laying them to rest.

“I feel like I shouldn’t be as relieved as I am that it’s done,” he said into his communicator. “It’s like…almost disrespectful.”

**Pretty sure that’s called closure.**

“Yeah, you might be right there.” He took the shovel up one last time and drove its blade into the ground between Trotter and Colby’s graves, and picked up Captain Aya’s helmet from where it sat next to his feet. He was sure she wouldn’t have minded him borrowing it to use as part of a makeshift grave marker. “Time to keep exploring,” he said as he placed the helmet over the shovel’s handle. With one last look back at the graves of the crew, he headed into the rear of the ship.

**Where are you headed now?**

“Past the bunks. Galley and the lab are back there.” He stopped at the point where the corridor branched off. “The corridor to the galley is _really_ scorched – there must have been one hell of a fire back there. I’m tempted to go that way first, to be honest. Lab’s where my rats are, and I’m kind of afraid of what I’ll find there. If the other humans didn’t make it, what chance do _they_ have?”

**When was the last time you had anything to eat?**

“God, it would have been _hours_ ago, like at least twelve. Since right before I went to bed at the very latest. Escape pod didn’t have any food or water in it, so I haven’t had a thing to eat or drink since I got here. And now that you mention it, I _am_ pretty hungry.”

**Head for the galley, then.**

“Galley it is.” He did his best to ignore the corridor’s scorched walls, ceiling and floor as he headed through to the ship’s galley. The galley’s door was tightly closed, something he discovered as he attempted to slide it open. “Okay, the galley door is _seriously_ stuck,” he said as he tried to push the door along its track. A piece of scrap metal lying on the floor nearby caught his eye, and he bent to pick it up. “Fortunately I’m not above bashing the shit out of it,” he added as he tossed the piece of scrap between his hands – it looked like a support strut. A chill went through him as he realised it resembled the one that had gone straight through the captain, and he shook it off. “Because really, just between you and me? I don’t think we’re getting our deposit back.”

**No, definitely not.**

“Yeah, I didn’t think so.” He gripped the piece of scrap with both hands and wedged one end into the tiny gap between the door and the corridor wall. “I’m gonna keep at this for a bit – it’s really my best bet for finding something to eat.” He started trying to lever the door open. “Come _on_ you bastard, open up already…”

Ten minutes later, he was ready to admit defeat.

“Okay, I don’t want to say that this is _impossible_ , because that’d sound like I’m exaggerating,” he said once he’d managed to catch his breath. “So let’s just say that getting into the galley is improbable.” He glared at the galley door from where he sat on the floor against the corridor wall, resisting the very strong impulse to flip it the bird. “Highly, _highly_ improbable.”

He tipped his head back against the wall. “It’s starting to get late anyway. The sun – the star, rather, Tau Ceti,” he corrected himself, “it’s starting to get low on the horizon. I really need to start thinking about finding somewhere to sleep.”

**Exactly how hungry are you?**

“Absolutely fucking _starving_.”

**I think you should keep trying. Maybe try pulling on it instead of bashing the shit out of it?**

He stared at the little text display on his left wrist. “Are you fucking _kidding_ me right now,” he said flatly.

**You said you were fucking starving. If I was where you are I’d do everything I could to get in there.**

“You really are a sucker for punishment, aren’t you? At least as long as it’s someone else going through it.” He eased himself up off the floor. “All right. Against my better judgement, I’ll take another swing at it.”

Rather than trying to lever it open, this time he took Meredith’s advice and started trying to pull the door back along its track. At first it stubbornly refused to move, so he adjusted his grip on the handle and pulled harder.

That did the trick. Slowly but surely the door began to slide open – every time it showed signs of sticking he planted his feet a little more firmly, adjusted his grip and pulled at it again. When it was just half a foot from being completely open, he did something potentially very stupid.

He yanked on the handle as hard as he could.

The worst pain he had ever felt erupted from his left shoulder as the joint dislocated, whiting his vision out completely, and he let out a scream so loud that it echoed through the corridor. Before he realised what he was doing, he slammed his left side against the wall and popped his shoulder back into its socket. “Ow, ow, _ow_ ,” he moaned as he slid down the wall, clutching his shoulder with his right hand. “Mother _fucker_ that hurts…”

As he looked toward his left, though, elation managed to override the incredible amount of pain he was in, and he grinned.

The door was finally open.

* * *

**I totally pulled my shoulder out of joint! And it was TOTALLY FUCKING WORTH IT!**

Meredith paused in eating her pizza, a slice of Hawaiian frozen halfway between her mouth and the pizza box. “Did you get the door open?” she asked.

**I GOT IT OPEN!**

“ _Yes!_ ” Meredith cheered and punched the air in triumph. “Did you pull on it like I said to?”

**A bit too hard, but yep! I yanked the shit out of that motherfucker. Though I’m in an incredible amount of pain right now, like you wouldn’t BELIEVE.**

“Please tell me you found _something_ to eat.”

**YEP. Am eating chili macaroni and drinking some bottled water. This chili mac is kinda nasty because I’ve got no way of heating it up, but honestly? Best thing I’ve eaten in a very long time.**

“Oh, I bet. Your poor shoulder though.”

**I popped it back into place, it’s okay. Hurts like a motherfucker though.** He was quiet for a little while – Meredith figured he was probably eating. **Chili mac will be gone soon, sadly, but that’s a problem for three-minutes-from-now Taylor.**

“And at least now you can get into the galley without destroying your other shoulder.”

**That is a very good point. So what do you think I should do now? Go check out the lab, or figure out where the hell I’m going to sleep?**

“Do you think you can handle what you might find in the lab?”

Taylor was quiet again – this time for longer than a few minutes. **I think so. I survived a spaceship crash, didn’t I?**

“Brace yourself though, yeah? Just in case.”

**I will.** More quiet – Meredith figured he was concentrating on making his way to the lab. **Okay, well, time for yet another round of good news slash bad news.**

“I’m not sure I like the sound of that.”

**The good news – all of my handwritten notes on the maze-running and food-seeking habits of Sprague Dawley rats in various gravities? Totally intact. You can tell my professors that they don’t have to worry this trip was all for nothing. I got what I was after.**

“What’s the bad news?”

**Their cage looks like someone sat on it. It’s half-crushed and all warped from the heat, and my rats are nowhere to be found. I’d really love to believe that they survived the crash and escaped into the ship’s ducts, and they’re going to start a little rat civilisation on this moon.**

Meredith held up a hand and crossed her fingers, not caring a bit that Taylor couldn’t see it. “Crossing my fingers for that.”

**Yeah, me too. I think I’ll leave my notes here. Who knows, in like a million generations they could end up as this moon’s sacred texts. And hey, in addition to a galley full of rations I’ve got a fallback stock of food pellets and a half-full water bottle.**

“Let’s hope it doesn’t come down to you eating rat food.”

**You and me both. Anyway, like I said earlier it’s getting really late. I need to start figuring out my next move. Namely, where the hell I’m going to sleep tonight.**

Meredith could almost imagine Taylor climbing up on top of a counter and swinging his feet back and forth as he considered his next move. **So. Stasis pod’s humming along nicely and keeping the captain alive and well – or alive, at the very least. But as long as I have the generator hooked up to the pod, I have no way of powering the distress beacon or the defence turret. I’m not all that worried about the turret, because I seriously doubt that there’s anything on this rock apart from me and the captain. So I don’t really have any need to defend myself. But at the same time, without the beacon nobody’s going to know that I’m here. Nobody’s going to know to rescue me.**

“Don’t you _dare_ unplug the stasis pod,” Meredith snapped.

**I’m not gonna, don’t worry. Captain’s been through far too much for me to just let her die. Maybe tomorrow I’ll be able to figure out how to get the beacon working.** She could almost hear him let out a sigh. **I swear that at least some part of me is pretty sure they picked the wrong science student for this mission, or that I picked the wrong ship. Either way, this HAS to be worth some bonus points on my final grade.**

“You just got unlucky. That’s all.”

**That’s one way of looking at it. Anyway. Tau Ceti is down now, and I gotta tell you – it’s darker than a goth or emo kid’s journal, and colder than the prom queen’s shoulder./strong >**

****

Meredith shivered a little. “ _Fuck_ that’s cold.”

**Mmm-hmm. I have a couple of options here. One, I can stay in the wreckage. Except that since the ship’s without power, I have no way of resealing any of the doors I’ve managed to open. So while I’ll have a roof over my head, I’ll be completely exposed to the elements.**

“Not liking that idea.”

**Yeah, me neither. My other option is to go around to the rear of the ship and pitch a tent near the reactor engine.**

Meredith did a small double-take at the last two words. “Reactor, as in a _nuclear_ reactor?”

**As in a nuclear reactor. Believe me, I’m not liking the idea much either. But it’s warm near the reactor, and if I sleep in the ship I’ll most likely freeze to death. And that’s WITH my IEVA suit and my helmet on.** There was more quiet, during which Meredith took the opportunity to finish her slice of pizza. **My suit sensor says the engine’s giving off about a hundred and fifty rads right now. I’m not precisely sure if that’d be enough to kill me while I’m sleeping or not, though. Could you find out for me?**

“Yeah, of course I can. Gimme a few minutes.” She tapped out of the Lifeline app and into her text messages, and found her message history with Quinn. **Is 150 rads of radiation enough to kill someone?** she tapped out into a new message. **Figure for about eight hours.**

Quinn’s response came quickly. **_Taylor, right? I asked Ivy, and she said that he’ll be all right – that won’t be enough to roast him. Might cause a bit of radiation sickness but other than that it won’t do any lasting damage._**

**Thanks** , she replied, and quickly switched back to the Lifeline app. “Taylor? You there?”

**Yep, still here.**

“Asked my roommate, and she asked one of her friends – you’ll be okay sleeping near the reactor.”

**Okay, cool. Honestly, though? I’m REALLY nervous about this. I mean, you’ve gotten me through today so far – and this has without any shadow of a doubt been the worst day of my entire life. So as nervous as it’s making me, I’m going to trust you on this. Hopefully your roommate’s friend is right.**

“You and me both.”

**I guess I won’t know until I wake up in the morning.** It was almost as if these words were accompanied by a particularly wry smile. **Good night, Meredith. Here’s to a better tomorrow.**

“‘Night, Taylor. Sleep well.”

* * *

There was a tiny gap in the tent’s zipper that the human had missed before they had settled down for the night – a gap that the creature took full advantage of. It crept into the tent, stretching itself as thin as possible so it could fit through the zipper, and paused to gather itself before sneaking up to the human’s head.

The human was curled up inside a sleeping bag, fast asleep. They had taken their helmet off and left it sitting on the floor of the tent within their reach – something that was a grave mistake. If the creature had had hands, it would have rubbed them together in anticipation. Instead, it climbed up onto the human’s face and snaked a long tendril toward their mouth, and began worming itself inside.

Without warning, and without waking up, the human wrinkled their nose and batted at their face with a hand. The creature tumbled down to the floor of the tent and bounced a couple of times before coming to rest. Undeterred, it shook itself and began its climb anew, this time managing to get halfway inside the human’s mouth before being batted away again. Rather than try a third time, the creature instead gathered itself and headed back outside the way it had come in.

It would try again the next night. The human would join them soon enough. Of that, the creature had no doubt.


	4. Part One :: Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So unfortunately I didn't manage to finish NaNoWriMo this year. Oh well. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ It did give me the kick up the arse I needed to get some work done on this fic, though, so there is that. Hopefully I can get this fic finished sometime next decade.

### Chapter 3

The next morning, Meredith skipped work. She knew there was no way she could have concentrated on shelving books and directing patrons – most of whom were her fellow students – around the library. Not when there was someone halfway across the universe who was completely reliant on her for their survival.

She had just settled herself on one of the benches in the courtyard outside her residence hall with her breakfast – a blueberry muffin and a mug of coffee, both swiped from the communal kitchen – when her phone chimed and its screen lit up with a new message from Taylor, one that made her chuckle. **Hey check it out! I’m not dead!**

“Good morning to you too, Taylor,” Meredith replied, amused.

**Sorry. Just relieved that I’m still alive. I don’t even have an ear growing out of my forehead, or any other weird toxic radiation mutations. Awesome.**

“I’m glad you’re still alive too. I was a bit worried that I was going to wake up this morning and you…well, _weren’t_.”

**You and me both.** There was a lull in their conversation, during which Meredith took the opportunity to drink some of her coffee. **Okay. Fresh new day, same old moon. I might be oversharing a bit here, but I woke up with a fucking HORRIBLE taste in my mouth. Like I’d licked the bottom of my rats’ cage during the night.**

“Okay, that’s disgusting.”

**Tell me about it. I rinsed my mouth out almost as soon as I got my eyes open and spat it out, and it had this weird green tint to it. Which probably has something to do with the trace elements in this place’s atmosphere. That’s pretty weird though, huh?**

Meredith had to read those few sentences again just to be sure of what Taylor had said. “The water you spat out was _green?_ ”

**Yep.**

“Okay, again, disgusting.” An awful thought occurred to her, and she very nearly dropped her mug on the ground. “You don’t think it’s radiation sickness?”

**Jesus Christ, I hope not. I don’t feel bad or anything. I don’t have a headache, I’m not nauseous, nothing like that. Apart from the whole ‘lost in space’ aspect of things, I actually woke up feeling really good this morning.**

“Don’t forget the whole ‘bottom of a rat cage’ feeling in your mouth.”

**Ugh, thanks for the reminder. At least I’ve got rations to get rid of that godawful taste. Maple sausage sounds pretty good right now – closest thing to breakfast I could find in the galley last night.**

By the time a new message from Taylor appeared, Meredith had devoured her muffin and was making short work of the remainder of her coffee. **Well. That was…‘delicious’ isn’t quite the word I’m searching for. ‘Sustenance’, maybe, but just barely.**

“I take it breakfast was a disappointment.”

**That’s an understatement. What I wouldn’t give for my dad’s pancakes right about now.** Taylor’s tone seemed wistful, and Meredith could hardly blame him. **It should get me through today’s field trip, though.** He was quiet for a few minutes – Meredith figured he was getting ready to head off. **Generator’s still humming along and powering the stasis pod, and Captain Aya’s still stable inside. I’d prefer ‘healed’ to stable, but oh well – I guess when it comes to miracle technology, you take what you can get.**

“That’s the spirit.”

**I do my best.** Meredith swore she could see Taylor grinning at this. **Anyway, with the captain stowed safely away I can step out for a few hours. Should be more than enough time to go check out that weird as fuck peak I saw yesterday and still make it back here by nightfall.**

“Just be careful, yeah?”

**Always. Just one more pass over the ship to make sure everything’s locked down – well, as much as it can be, anyway – and then I’m packing some rations and water, and I’m heading out. I’ll keep you posted along the way.**

Almost as soon as Taylor had sent that last sentence the words **Taylor is busy** flashed up onscreen. Knowing that it would be at least an hour before she heard from him again, Meredith crumpled her muffin wrapper up into a ball and drained the rest of her coffee out of its mug. The thought of spending her day off bingeing _A Series Of Unfortunate Events_ was tempting, but she had assignments and readings to be done for class. If nothing else, it would keep her mind busy and stop her worrying about Taylor hiking across a nameless moon all by himself.

Her mind made up, she rose to her feet and headed back inside to hit the books, closing the front door of the residence hall behind her.

* * *

“Oh you have got to be fucking _kidding_ me right now,” Taylor groaned when he saw what was blocking his path. The biggest boulder he had ever seen sat in front of him, almost right in the middle of the canyon he had been traversing for the last forty minutes. It was almost perfectly spherical, its very top at least twice as high up as he was tall. “Hey Meredith?”

**Yeah?**

“I was just working my way through this shallow canyon, and there’s this huge boulder blocking my way. It’s way too big to climb over, and I’m not entirely sure I can find a way around it. Think I should back out and try another path?”

**I think that’s the best idea, yeah. Don’t want you breaking a leg or anything.**

“Yeah, I’m with you.” He glared at the boulder and resisted the very strong impulse to flip it off. “Whole thing looks like a deathtrap waiting to be sprung.” He turned around and eyed the path he’d spent more than half an hour following, tracing the neat line of bootprints that he’d left behind him in the fine, white sand. “There’s a bit of a slope up the canyon wall something like a few hundred yards back the way I came. I really hate to lose time doubling back,” he continued as he started walking back through the canyon, “but it’s entirely preferable to the whole ‘breaking a leg trillions of miles from the nearest hospital’ thing.”

**Yeah, a much better idea. How are things going otherwise?**

“Well, about half an hour or so ago I came across my escape pod. It’d moved something like ten feet during the night.”

**Sounds like there were some really strong winds overnight.**

“Yeah, sounds like it,” he echoed. “Must have caught the chute and dragged it.” He refused to think about the possibility that there were little green men that might have moved the pod and were now stalking him, as much as it would have been nice to have a little bit of companionship. “Hey, I’m not bothering you, am I?”

**Hell no. I needed a break anyway.**

“Yeah? What’re you doing?”

**Studying, mostly. I took today off work and figured I might as well hit the books. Netflix was tempting as hell but I kind of want to pass this semester. There are quite a few people who will be cross at me if I don’t.**

“I can be one of them if you want me to,” Taylor said with a smirk, not caring a whit that he was the only person who was even remotely aware of what he was doing.

**Cheeky little shit.** Meredith sounded more amused than she did annoyed, though – at least, that was the impression that Taylor got – so he grinned a little to himself.

“I do my best. I’m gonna get back to hiking – I’ll check back in when something exciting happens.” _Not that anything exciting’s going to happen anytime soon_ , he grumbled silently before putting the thought out of his mind.

Less than an hour later, he was eating his words.

“So, um…right now I’m having one of those dilemmas that only people stranded on a moon can have. Bear with me here, okay?”

**I’m not sure I like the sound of that.**

“It’s nothing bad, don’t worry. Well, it _could_ be bad,” he corrected himself. “It really depends.”

**So what’s the dilemma?**

“There’s a fucking huge crater in front of me.”

_Huge_ was a serious understatement. If he had to guess, it looked easily to be five or so miles across. It wasn’t deep – rather, it was fairly shallow – but even so he wasn’t sure he liked the idea of trying to go down into it just to get to the other side. What if it turned out to be like the boulder he’d encountered earlier, and he broke something trying to cross it?

“I’m not kidding when I say it’s huge. This thing is fucking _massive_. If I wasn’t absolutely terrified of dying alone in deep space at any given second, I’d take a moment to be really, _really_ awed.”

**Kind of makes me wish you could send me a photo. I’m not sure if you can do that with this app or not.**

“I couldn’t send a photo even if I wanted to. Helmet camera broke yesterday.” He dropped down into a crouch and studied the crater. “My problem right now is that this marvel of geography is smack-dab in the middle of where I’m headed. So I either hike around the perimeter until I get to the other side, or I try my luck hopping down into it and cut straight across. There’s something to be said for the shortest distance between two points, but people don’t usually factor giant craters into that particular equation. So what do you think? Straight across or go around?”

**Hiking around the perimeter sounds like the better option to me.**

“Yeah, all right. Probably the safer of the two options, to be honest. All flat surfaces up here.” He rose up out of his crouch, straightening to his full height. “About the most exciting decision I anticipate having to make during the next couple of hours is which direction I should start walking in. And seeing as I don’t have any coins on me, because there aren’t any laundromats or arcades here, I’m gonna leave this one up to you. Could be the most important decision you make all day. Do I walk clockwise, or counter-clockwise?”

There was no answer from Meredith for a little while – Taylor figured she was considering how to answer this particular question. **I’m gonna say…counter.**

“ _Wow_. Counter-clockwise? That is a _very_ daring choice!” He snickered quietly and started heading off to his right. “As I take off marching to my right, in a fucking _gigantic_ circle on an unknown moon in a poorly trafficked quadrant, know that your strong, clear decision-making skills have made all the difference!”

***snicker***

He grinned again and continued, “Clockwise sucks! Counter-clockwise rules! Those who swim against the tide get hit in the face with all the best fish!”

**Taylor, stop, I think I might break a rib if you make me laugh any more!**

“I think I used up all my enthusiasm just now anyway. And I still have a hell of a lot of walking left to do, so go me. I’ll message you when I’m about halfway. If anything really exciting happens, though, I promise you’ll be the first to know.”

**I’m going to hold you to that.**

“Oh, I know. Believe me, I know.”

* * *

**OH MY FUCKING GOD! YOU’RE NEVER GONNA BELIEVE IT!**

Meredith looked up from her tablet when her phone chimed at her, the distinctive high-pitched tri-tone sound indicating that she had a new message in her Lifeline app. She marked her spot in the reading she was working through, set the tablet aside and fetched her phone from its spot on her bedside table. “I’m not gonna believe what?” she asked once she had the app open to her chat history with Taylor.

**I’m still walking around a moon crater, and it’s still BORING AS FUCK!** There was a brief pause before he continued, **Sorry. I was just going a tiny bit crazy, what with having nothing but the sound of my own thoughts for company. Never thought I’d hate being alone so much.**

“It’s all good. Wanna chat? I could do with a break anyway.”

**YES PLEASE. I mean, I don’t want to be a bother, but…you’re kinda all I got right now.**

“You’re not being a bother.”

**You sure?**

“Totally sure.”

She almost imagined that she could hear Taylor letting out a sigh of relief at this. **So…have YOU ever wandered around the perimeter of a giant moon crater?**

“Can’t say I’ve ever had the pleasure, no.”

**Well, try to imagine it this way – I feel like I’m a single grain of rice balanced on the rim of the biggest wok in the universe. That’s about the scale of things here.**

“That’s pretty huge.”

**Mmm-hmm. Some part of me is utterly terrified that a gigantic sugar snap pea or a great big bit of carrot is going to fall out of the sky onto my head and crush me.**

“Wow. That’s a…cheery thought.”

**It’s not the most rational fear, I know. But that being said, two whole days ago I wouldn’t have thought that a spaceship crash was a very rational fear. So there is that.**

“Hey, if you’re afraid of it then as far as I’m concerned it’s an entirely rational fear.”

**Okay, that makes me feel a bit better.** Meredith smiled a little at this. **Anyway, the other side of the crater’s in sight. I’m going to keep on hiking. Thanks for the pep talk.**

“No problem, Taylor.”

A knock sounded at the door of Meredith’s room just as Taylor’s busy message flashed up onscreen. She set her phone aside, though still within reach, and picked up her tablet again. “Yeah, come in,” she said as she unlocked her tablet.

“Only me,” Quinn said as she slipped into the room and closed the door behind her. “How’s he travelling?”

Meredith didn’t need to ask who Quinn was talking about – she knew immediately. “He’s travelling,” she replied. “Not much else to say, really.”

Quinn seemed to consider this as she perched on the very end of Meredith’s bed. “So while he’s been travelling, what have you been doing all morning? I thought you had to work.”

“Skipped work today.” She held up her tablet just long enough for Quinn to see what she was reading – it had a chapter of Foucault’s _Archaeology of Knowledge_ open on its screen. “My folks’ll be annoyed at me if I don’t pass Adams’ class.”

“But you’re also worried about Taylor.”

It wasn’t a question, yet Meredith responded as if it was. “Well, yeah. Of course I’m worried about him. He’s all by himself on a deserted moon God only knows where, wouldn’t you be worried?” She ducked her head a little. “I wasn’t sure I could concentrate on work if I was worrying about him.”

Part of her was almost certain that Quinn would tease her for worrying about someone she barely knew – someone she’d only met by chance, all because his call for help had reached her phone at exactly the right moment. The rest of her, the part that knew better, squashed that right down – if there was one thing Quinn would never do, except maybe in jest, it was tease Meredith about something that she considered important.

“Good,” Quinn said, her tone almost determined. “He needs someone to worry about him.”

“You sound like his mother.”

Quinn shrugged. “His mother’s not there right now. Someone has to.” She gave Meredith a reassuring smile. “He’ll be okay, Mere. I know he will be.”

Meredith did her best to return Quinn’s smile. “I hope so.”

* * *

Somewhat to his surprise, Taylor ended up reaching the other side of the crater a lot sooner than he thought was even remotely possible. Even more surprising was what he saw when he looked back across the crater to the other side. The crater now looked even bigger than it had before he’d started his hike. He couldn’t even see the wreckage of the _Varia_ from where he was standing. The air above the crater was shimmering like it would above the road at home during summer, looking almost like a mirage.

“Huh, that’s weird,” he said quietly, and checked his wrist computer. Among the jumble of information that populated its screen – his body temperature, pulse and respiratory rate, the air pressure and composition, and the level of oxygen left in his IEVA suit’s tank – was a reading of the air temperature. It was just barely fifteen degrees – warm enough that he was able to take his helmet off, but too cold for what he was seeing. “Okay, that should _not_ be possible.”

**What shouldn’t be possible?**

“I just got to the other side of the crater. It didn’t take as long to hike as I thought it would. Which I’m not exactly complaining about.”

**But?**

“There’s this weird sort of…shimmering above the crater. It looks a lot like the heat shimmer you see above a road on a hot day. It’s nowhere near hot enough for that, though.”

**That really is weird.**

“I know, right? It’s warm enough that I don’t have my helmet on – I found a carabiner and a bit of rope in the wreckage, and I’ve got my helmet tied onto that and clipped onto my backpack – but it’s definitely too cold for heat shimmer or shit like that.” He shook his head a little. “Probably nothing I need to be worried about, though.”

**How close do you think you are to the peak?**

Taylor squinted a little as he considered his answer to Meredith’s question. “Maybe…a couple of miles, still? I can definitely still make it there before nightfall. It’s just…”

**What?**

“It’s probably just my eyes playing tricks on me. But I feel like the peak keeps getting further away the closer I get to it.” He shook his head. “I’m definitely seeing things. I just have to put my head down and keep on hiking. Check back in later.”

**Be careful. Please.**

He let out a quiet, almost rusty chuckle. “You sound like my mom.”

**Your mom’s not there right now. Someone has to sound like her, right?**

“And I appreciate it, believe me.” He let out a breath, one that sounded almost like a sigh. “I miss my mom. I really do.”

**You’ll get to see her soon. I know you will.**

“I hope so. Be nice if I could get off this fucking rock by- _ahh!_ ”

He broke off and let out a yell as the toe of his left boot caught on something, and he went down hard. His forehead smacked against the ground as he hit the deck. “Ow. That hurt.”

**What just happened?**

“I just tripped over something.”

**Oh dear.**

“Yeah, I know. I’ve been so graceful so far, it must be hard for you to believe that I could just trip over my own fucking feet all the time.” He winced a little as he eased himself up onto his knees. “Oh, that’s gonna leave a mark.”

**So what did you trip over, exactly?**

“Probably just my own feet, like I said. Happens all the time back home.” He took a few moments to steady himself before getting back to his feet. As soon as he was upright he turned around and crouched down so he could get a closer look at what he had tripped over. “Huh.“

**What?**

“It’s really buried in the sand, so I’m not sure how I just tripped over it, but it’s shiny and kinda…” He squinted again as he studied it. “Metallic-looking.”

As he finished speaking it hit him, and he felt his eyes go wide. “It’s a bit of metal. How the _fuck_ is there a bit of metal here? That shouldn’t be possible.” He reached out and tugged it out of the sand, brushed it off and started examining it. “It has to be a bit of a panel from the _Varia_ – I mean, what else could it be? There aren’t any other shipwrecks here.”

**None that you’ve seen, at least.**

“Okay, yeah, none that I’ve seen. And if it _is_ from the _Varia_ , it’s weird that it’s come down so far from the rest of the ship.” He slipped the right strap of his backpack off his shoulder and drew the backpack around in front of him so he could get at the buckles. “I think I’ll hang onto it. Who knows, I might find out what it is after I get picked up.” _If I ever get picked up_. “Anyhow, I’m pretty much directly opposite the spot where I started walking around this crater, so I’m going to keep heading north.”

He slipped the piece of metal into his backpack, did up the buckles and shifted it back around again, slipping his right arm back through the strap and settling it onto his shoulder. “What a long, strange counter-clockwise trip it’s been.”

* * *

By the time midday rolled around, Meredith was in desperate need of a break. The pixels on the screen of her tablet were beginning to blur in front of her eyes, which were beginning to ache, and she could feel a headache beginning to build in a tight band across her forehead. She set her tablet aside and rubbed her eyes, cursing whatever it was that had led her to pursue a career in social work.

“You look all done in,” she heard Quinn saying, sympathy in her voice, and she looked up. Her roommate stood in the doorway of her room, leaning against the door jamb with a mug in one hand. “I made you some coffee,” Quinn explained. “Lots of milk and a couple shots apiece of vanilla and caramel, just how you like it.”

Meredith gave Quinn a relieved smile and got up from her bed. “You’re amazing, Quinn. Did I ever mention how much I love you?”

“At least once or twice.” She handed the mug over and hid a smile when she saw Meredith just about stick her whole face into it. “Have you been studying this entire time?”

“Just about,” Meredith replied between sips of coffee. “I need one hell of a break.”

“Well, you’re getting one,” Quinn said, thinking quickly. “You in the mood for Indian?”

Meredith paused mid-sip and raised an eyebrow at Quinn over the rim of the mug. “Quinn, I _am_ Indian. I’m always in the fucking mood.”

Quinn raised her hands in self-defence. “Just checking. Come on, finish your coffee and we’ll go. It’s my treat.”

The two of them ended up at the Indian restaurant over on Westwood, a few blocks from campus. While they were waiting to be seated, Meredith took her phone from her pocket and silenced it. “Do you think that’s the best idea?” Quinn asked once she realised what Meredith had done. “I mean, what if he needs you?”

“There’s nothing on that moon except for him and the captain of his ship, and the captain’s unconscious in a stasis pod somewhere in the ship’s wreckage,” Meredith replied. “Plus he’s tough as all get out. He has to be to have survived as long as he has. I think he’ll be all right for now.” She gave her Lifeline app one last check for any messages before locking her phone and slipping it into a pocket.

“If you’re sure,” Quinn said – she sounded a little uncertain, something very much out of character – and Meredith nodded.

“If it makes you feel any better, I’ll check my phone once lunch gets here,” Meredith offered. “He probably won’t have much to say, but I can definitely check in with him and see how he’s going.”

“That does make me feel better, yeah.” Quinn gave Meredith a slightly apologetic smile. “I know he’s probably just fine and it makes me sound like a mother hen and all, but he’s alone out there. I think I’d want someone watching out for me, that’s all.”

“I don’t think it makes you sound like that at all, Quinn. He’s…” Meredith trailed off as she hunted mentally for the right words. “It’s like he’s my little brother. I mean, he’s a sophomore so he’s at least two years younger than us, so age-wise he’s old enough. Reminds me a lot of Fabian, to be honest, and I’d want someone to be looking out for him if he was stranded somewhere. So I feel exactly the same way.”

Just as Meredith had thought, there was nothing particularly exciting happening when she checked her phone next – Taylor was still on his hike across the moon, still headed toward the peak he’d seen the previous day. With both she and Quinn satisfied that their astronaut friend was doing okay, Meredith put her phone away and resolved not to check it again until they were leaving the restaurant.

By the time Meredith got around to checking in with Taylor again, the little indicator light right at the top of her phone’s screen was rapidly flashing bright red. Almost immediately she felt a wave of cold sweep over her, and she swallowed hard. She had no idea how long her phone had been flashing at her, but she had a distinct feeling that Taylor was trying desperately to get her attention – and worse, she was pretty sure he’d been trying for quite a while.

As soon as she got her phone unlocked and the Lifeline app open, she realised she was right.

**Um, so, here’s something. On this side of the crater, maybe a few miles north of its edge, there’s a little ridge. And on that little ridge, there are more little pieces of metal – like, SEVERAL more.**

**And then, just on the other side of that little ridge I just mentioned, where someone a lot shorter than me probably couldn’t see it until after they’d reached the top, there’s, um…**

**Meredith, there’s a spaceship.**


	5. Part One :: Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a quick note - I start my Master's degree next week, so updates may be even more sporadic than usual for a while. I have a good backlog of chapters stored up though, and I'm hopeful that with my degree being part-time I'll still have plenty of time to write. *crosses fingers*

### Chapter 4

A spaceship.

Taylor dropped to his knees in the sand and just _stared_ at the wreckage that lay before him, barely daring to believe what he was seeing. “Oh Jesus Christ,” he managed to whisper – the last words he was able to get out before panic set in.

**Taylor? Are you okay?**

_No I’m not fucking okay_ , he wanted to say, but he couldn’t stop hyperventilating long enough to speak. He dug his fingers into the sand and squeezed his eyes shut for a few moments, willing his breaths to slow down long enough for him to properly catch them.

**Taylor, breathe. Okay? In for seven, out for eleven. Can you do that for me?**

“Yeah,” he managed to choke out. “Y-yeah, I can do that.”

It took an incredible amount of effort, but he finally managed to slow his breathing down, and he let out a sigh of relief. “It’s a good thing the air here’s okay to breathe,” he said at last. “Because I just spent the last few minutes hyperventilating it.”

**Are you okay?**

“I’m fine. Just the shock of seeing it.” He shook his head a little in disbelief. “What the hell? I mean…what the actual _fuck?_ ”

**What does it look like? Is it intact?**

“I’m not sure, but it mostly looks like it is. It’s a much smaller ship than the _Varia_ – I think it’s what’s called a caravel-class vessel. It would’ve had half a dozen crew at most, making quick runs with minimal armament.”

**Which probably means it didn’t have much in the way of defences.**

“Yeah.” He sat back on his heels and eyed the wreckage. “The engine looks like it was just… _sheared_ is the best word I can think of. It looks like it was sheared off the rest of the ship. I can’t help but wonder if it collided with space debris or something like that.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “I have _so_ many questions. Like, at least a million. But I can’t answer any of them unless I go down and have a poke around in the wreckage, and I am _really_ wary of doing that.”

**I think you should go and have a look.**

“If you say so,” Taylor said dubiously. He straightened up and started heading down the slope toward the ridge. “This is crazy. What I’m doing right now, heading down _toward_ this derelict ship instead of _away_ from it, like _every single instinct_ is telling me to do…it’s fucking _crazy_.” His right boot snagged on a piece of metal, and he narrowly missed tripping over and faceplanting in the sand all over again. “I mean, this is the part in every single horror movie where I’d be watching the idiot onscreen, and I’d be muttering to myself, ‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you’. Except that right now? _I’m_ the idiot on the screen!” He glanced sharply at his wrist communicator. “You’d better not be laughing right now!”

**I’m trying very hard not to. I promise.**

“Uh-huh. Right.” He came to a halt a couple of feet from the edge of the ridge and peered over, trying to gauge how difficult it would be to get down. The ground below looked like it was a long way down, and he swallowed hard. “Seriously, shouldn’t I walk away right now, before the killer in the space-hockey mask from Camp Mare Tranquillitatis jumps out and stabs me? Or worse, forces me to play space-hockey? I’m fucking _terrible_ at sports!”

**You should have a look. Really.**

He let out a sigh that came up just short of sounding very put-upon. “All right. Fine. But if I get serial-killed in there, it’s on you. Okay? Hell, even if I’m just maimed, non-serially, I’m gonna be _really_ upset.” He sat down on the edge of the ridge and braced himself. “Gimme a minute or so to get down there,” he said, before carefully lowering himself down from the ridge. There was a moment or so of what felt like weightlessness, then he was touching down on the ground below.

“Well, that was easy,” he said once he had steadied himself. He glanced back up at the top of the ridge. Now that he was on its other side, it didn’t look as high up as it had when he’d been up there – where before it had looked like easily four times his height, now it was closer to twice that high. “A little _too_ easy, maybe. I seriously hate everything about what’s happening in my life right now.”

**So what does it look like, now that you’re closer?**

“You know how I said the _Varia_ looked like it had gone through a meteor storm? Well, this ship looks twice as bad. It’s pretty beaten up.” He brushed a layer of fine sand off the hull of the wreck. “There’s some writing here that isn’t all that legible – looks like Chinese characters. Maybe Japanese. I can’t be too sure, there’s too much paint missing.”

**How long do you think it’s been there?**

In lieu of an immediate response, he dug the piece of metal he’d found earlier out of his backpack and held it up against the wreck. The piece of metal looked a little shinier in comparison, though not by much. “Not very long. Hull’s not overly oxidised.”

He put the piece of metal away and took a deep, steadying breath. “I _really_ don’t like this, Meredith. This has to be the creepiest thing I’ve ever seen. I’m looking for any reason in the universe _not_ to go inside.”

**You’ve come this far. You HAVE to keep exploring.**

“Fuck. Okay.” He walked over to the airlock and stopped just short of its entrance. Its partly-opened iris and the void that lay beyond it looked forbidding and wholly uninviting. Before he could stop himself, he untied his helmet from its spot on his backpack and lowered it over his head, locking it into place, and pushed the faceplate up before switching on the helmet’s light and taking another deep breath. “Headlamp’s on. I’m going in.”

* * *

Meredith couldn’t remember the last time she’d been as nervous as she was in that moment. Her new friend was about to start exploring a shipwreck, one that neither of them had any idea about how long it had been there, and all she could do was watch her phone and hope it wasn’t too long before she heard from him again.

**Ow. My shoulder is killing me. I definitely didn’t do it any favours getting through the airlock. I just hope I can find some painkillers in here somewhere.**

“What’s it look like inside?” she asked. She and Quinn were back on campus, holed up in a study room in the Arts Library. Quinn had taken a heavy architecture book from a shelf as they’d passed, and Meredith had propped her phone up against it so the two of them could both see what Taylor had to say.

**Dark, for starters. REALLY dark. Which, of course it fucking is. How could it terrify me to my core if it WASN’T dark in here? I don’t care that I’ve got a light on my helmet, it’s still scary as fuck.**

“Aside from it being dark. I figured it would be dark in there, seeing as you turned your light on.”

**Aside from that, then.** He was quiet for a little while. **I reckon the ship got shaken around pretty hard before it crashed. There’s shit all over the floor and falling out of cabinets. Pretty slow going picking my way through it all with just a headlamp to see by.** More silence. **So, I can tell you this much just from here – the instrument panels are smashed to splinters, and then THOSE splinters are smashed to splinters.**

“Yikes.”

**Mmm-hmm. I had some hope that maybe this thing had a working distress beacon, but that just went out the proverbial window.**

“Damn it,” Quinn said softly.

**Right now it looks like I’m in a sort of pass-through kind of thing. Figure I should take the east hall or the west one?**

“Your call,” Meredith said to Quinn, who quickly dug a coin out of a pocket.

“Heads for east, tails for west,” Quinn said, and flipped the coin. It came up tails. “West hall.”

**West it is. Turning left, we head down the lovely and spacious west hallway – and in case you’re wondering, that was most definitely sarcasm.**

“Nice to see you haven’t lost your sense of humour.”

**Never gonna happen.** Meredith was sure she could see Taylor grinning as he said this. **Okay, on either side of me is a sealed door. Without any power I don’t stand a chance in hell at getting either of them open, so I guess it’s-**

Meredith felt another chill settle over her as Taylor broke off. “Taylor?” she asked. “Everything okay?”

**Okay, that’s strange.**

“Jesus Christ Taylor, don’t scare me like that!”

**Sorry. But I just noticed that the compass on my IEVA suit still claims I’m headed north, even though I took a hard left down this hall. That’s…I don’t even have the words for how messed up that is.**

“That is _so_ fucked up,” Quinn commented.

“Keep going, Taylor,” Meredith said. “Straight ahead. Ignore your compass for now.”

**This is one of the worst ideas ever, just so you know. If I was a character in a horror movie – and hell, for all I know that’s exactly what I am right now – and I was watching that movie, I’d be BEYOND PISSED OFF at watching myself walking further into this wreck. I can practically hear myself yelling at myself for heading down the hall even further.**

“Is he always like this?” Quinn asked. Meredith could tell she was trying not to laugh. “He’s hilarious.”

“Pretty much, yeah.”

**“You’ve got a faulty compass!” I’m yelling at myself. “You can barely see where you’re going! And even worse, your headlamp’s starting to flicker, because YOU’RE A CHARACTER IN A BAD HORROR MOVIE!”** He paused, the break in speech lasting a little too long for Meredith to be comfortable with it. **Oh, son of a bitch. My fucking headlamp’s starting to flicker.**

“Keep moving,” Meredith told him. “Faster.”

“What are you doing?” Quinn hissed at her.

“I have a good feeling about this, shut up,” Meredith hissed back.

**Oh sure, that’s GREAT advice.** The sarcasm in Taylor’s words was crystal clear. **“Oh, you’re doing something stupid? Well then, just do it FASTER!” Nobody ever went wrong by pursuing THAT particular strand of logic!**

“Taylor, trust me. Okay? You’re headed in the right direction, I know it.” In all actuality, she didn’t, and she felt terrible about lying to both Taylor and Quinn, but it was better than telling them the truth and potentially scaring the absolute crap out of them.

**I really hope you’re right, Meredith. There’s an open door at the end of the hall – that’s where I’m headed. My headlamp’s strobing like I’m at a rave – I swear to whatever deity is out there, I’d better not get a migraine out of this…**

At the second that **Taylor is busy** flashed up on screen, Meredith unconsciously held her breath. While they were both pretty sure that there was nothing alive on the moon aside from Taylor – though the presence of the downed caravel spoke volumes otherwise – she was still worried that there was something hiding in the dark.

**And I’m in!** were his next words, a minute and a half later, and Meredith was able to breathe again. She let the breath she’d been holding out in a sigh of relief. **It looks like a pretty basic med bay. Found a medkit with a nice big bottle of painkillers in it – it’s labelled in Mandarin as well as English, so that answers the question of where this ship came from. And thank fuck for that, because my shoulder hurts like there’s no tomorrow.**

“What kind of painkillers?” Meredith asked.

**Uh…ibuprofen plus codeine. The good shit, in other words, so I’m really glad I’m not allergic to either. Bottle’s nearly empty though. It’d make a nice maraca if there weren’t only three pills left in it.**

“Well, that sucks,” Quinn commented.

**Yeah, no kidding. Not my place to judge, because the medkit would have been fully restocked before this ship’s last journey, but someone on this crew must’ve had one hell of a problem.**

“I’m sensing an ‘or’ here,” Meredith said.

**Or else…they took a whole bunch of pills rather than face whatever it was that brought the ship down.**

“Oh that is _dark_ ,” Quinn said, and Meredith felt her shiver.

**Nope, nope, nope. That** **’s officially too dark. Not gonna think in that direction, not in a million years.** In her mind’s eye, Meredith could very clearly see Taylor give a shudder at this. **Anyway, like I said my shoulder is KILLING me. I could definitely justify taking one of these painkillers now to make things a bit easier for me.** He paused again, and this time Meredith could tell he was thinking. **But then again, things could get a lot worse later. I might want to hang onto them.**

“Take one now. The way you said your shoulder’s killing you, it’s clear that you need it.”

**Yes. Thank you. There’s no point in suffering if I don’t have to. And I still have two pills left if I need them later. Which with the way my shoulder is right now, I WILL need them. Especially if I have to sleep on the ground again tonight. Gimme a second.**

“How did he hurt his shoulder?” Quinn asked quietly.

“Dislocated it trying to pull a stuck door open.”

“Oh my God.”

Meredith nodded. “Yeah. He got it back into place but it’s been hurting him ever since. All the more reason for him to get rescued as soon as possible.”

**Shite, my headlamp is REALLY flickering now. I think I need to get the hell out of here before it shuts off completely.**

“Have a bit more of a poke around. You might find more painkillers.”

**Ugh, okay. I am SO FREAKING NERVOUS about staying here any- oh hey, check it out!**

“What? What did you find?”

**A whole drawer full of glow rods! Score!** Meredith was pretty sure Taylor punched the air in triumph with his good arm as he said this. **There’s no way you could have known these were here, but still, I gotta hand it to you. You were right to tell me to stay. So thanks.**

“No worries,” Meredith said with a quietly satisfied smile.

**I’m gonna crack a couple of these and shake ‘em like they wronged me. Now it really DOES look like I’m at a rave!**

“Do you have any way of fixing your headlamp?” Meredith asked. “I mean, those glow rods won’t last forever.”

**I might be able to engage in a bit of percussive maintenance, but aside from that I have no idea how I’d go about fixing it. And yeah, the two rods I just cracked won’t last forever, but there’s still ten of them left. I’ve got them stashed in my backpack for later. I don’t feel so freaked out by the dark anymo- OH WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT?**

“What was what?”

**Um, there was this…I don’t know, this, like, scuttling sort of noise. It came from behind me, out in the corridor. I-I turned around, and…and I saw something. Something MOVING.**

“Okay, that’s officially creepy,” Quinn said with a shudder.

**It gets worse. The thing that was moving was glowing BRIGHT FUCKING GREEN. And-and there were actually lots of little somethings – I didn’t count how many there were, I was too busy trying not to freak out too much – all of them really close to the ground. They were glowing, and moving, and scuttling. All three of which are way, WAY high on my list of shit I was NOT EXPECTING TO SEE TODAY, if I can be honest with you. I-I don’t think I’m alone in this ship – I gotta get the hell outta here.**

Meredith bit her lip at this. Taylor was clearly terrified of what he’d just seen, and she wasn’t entirely sure she could blame him. Even despite this, she almost couldn’t help the next words that left her mouth. “Go see what it was.”

**Are you fucking KIDDING ME? Like I want to go CHASING AFTER whatever the fuck that was! Meredith, seriously, you didn’t hear it. I DID. And it was freaky as anything. Like, ‘don’t follow me into the dark’ freaky. Which, in case you’re keeping track, is THE WORST KIND OF FREAKY!**

“Taylor, do you trust me?”

**Yeah, of course I trust you.**

“Have I steered you wrong yet?”

She could almost see – and hear – Taylor letting out a sigh. **No. You haven’t.**

“Trust me, Tay. Go after it.”

* * *

“This is a terrible idea. I just want that on the record.”

His headlamp was still flickering, the strobing light coming dangerously close to giving him one hell of a migraine. He tightened his grip on the glow rods (which thankfully didn’t glow the same ominous green that he’d seen earlier, but instead gave off a light that was a warm, friendly yellow) and started picking his way back out of the med bay, dreading what awaited him out in the corridor. The thought of those little scuttling lights made him feel cold all over – as much as he desperately wanted some company, that wasn’t the sort of company he was after.

“That way, when they find me all chopped in half with a space chainsaw or whatever, I get to say _I told you so!_ ” He let out a strained half-laugh. “Hey, I’ll be dead. I have to take my little victories where I can get them.”

**Duly noted.**

“Okay. I’m back in the main corridor, with all the debris all over the place, and I’m trying to be really careful so I don’t- _fuck!_ ”

Just like earlier, when he’d tripped over the piece of metal on the top of the ridge outside, one of his boots caught on something buried in the mess that covered the corridor floor, and he proceeded to hit the deck. He automatically put both hands out to break his fall, somehow managing to keep hold of the glow rods and – miraculously enough – managing not to injure himself more than he was already. “What the _fuck_ was that?”

**Yeah, what WAS that? You didn’t trip over again, did you?**

“Yeah, I did. Not sure what it was.” He eased himself up onto his knees and shuffled around so that he was facing the way he’d come, and aimed his glow rods in that direction. “Oh, sweet! That thing I tripped over? It’s another little generator!”

**Oh, nice! That’s really good news.**

He smiled for the first time in what felt like hours. “Yeah, it’s excellent news. It’s a different model than the one I have back at the _Varia_ – it’s a bit smaller.” He reached out and picked it up, testing its weight. “And it feels lighter than the other one, so it’ll be easier to carry back there. But I’ve basically doubled my power supply, which can only be a good thing. So I’m calling my excursion into this nightmare ship a success, and I’m _also_ calling it finished. I’m getting the fuck out of here.”

Somehow, he managed not to trip over anything on his way back outside. The second he had climbed back out of the caravel’s airlock, he fell to his knees on the ground and yanked his helmet off as fast as he could. “I think I’d kiss the ground if I didn’t think Earth would get jealous,” he said as he shoved the glow rods into his backpack with the others he’d collected. “Jesus Christ. I don’t know know what that was but it scared the living hell out of me.”

**Maybe it was just your mind playing tricks on you** , Meredith ventured, seeming a little hesitant – and at the same time, a tiny bit apologetic for putting him through that nightmare.

“Maybe,” he echoed. “It’d definitely suck if I survived a spaceship crash, only to keel over later on from a heart attack.” He squeezed his eyes shut and willed his heart to slow down. “I’m just gonna sit here for a bit and try to catch my breath.”

It took what felt like forever, but soon his heart rate and his breathing had returned to what he considered normal. “Oh yeah, that’s _much_ better,” he said in utter relief.

**If it’s any consolation, I’m sorry for making you go through that.**

“No, it’s okay. I’m the one who went along with it – I could have put my foot down and backed out anytime I wanted, but I didn’t. And hey, I not only got a few supplies out of it, but I have enough power now to set up that distress beacon back at the _Varia_. So as much of a nightmare as it was, it was worth the trip.”

He tucked his legs up against his chest, crossed his arms as best he could and rested them on his knees, propping his chin up on his wrists. “Right, before I go any further I need to look at things. I still have a long hike north before I get to the peak. From where I’m sitting, I can see a couple more craters in my direct path – they’re small, though, nothing like the one I walked around earlier. So that’s some small consolation.”

He wriggled a hand out from beneath his chin and scratched at an itch on his forehead. “I’m hungry and thirsty, so this wouldn’t be the absolute worst time to refuel. And my shoulder still hurts a lot.”

**The painkiller didn’t help?**

“It probably just hasn’t kicked in yet. At least that’s what I’m hoping.” He glanced over at the generator he’d found in the caravel. “I don’t really see much point in dragging the generator I found with me all the way to the peak. I’m tempted to just leave it here and grab it on my way back to the _Varia_.” He grinned. “Hey, check out the optimism in the idea that I’m even gonna make it back there. Go Taylor.”

**Of course you’ll make it back there. Gotta fire up that distress beacon, right?**

“Yeah, yeah, you’re right. I’ll get back there.” He rubbed at his eyes. “Think I should just leave it here?”

**I think that’s the best idea.**

“Yeah, me too. No point expending any extra energy hauling this thing halfway around the moon and back. Either I’ll make it back and it’ll be waiting here for me - or I _won’t_ make it back, in which case I’m not going to need it anyway.”

**Wow. What a cheery thought.**

“Or, and here’s a third option I _really_ don’t want to think about, I’ll make it back here and the generator will be missing. In which case I’ll suddenly have _much_ bigger worries.” He shuddered a little at the thought. “I guess there’s not much point doing any more thinking about it. I’m just burning daylight at this point, and I really don’t know how much of it I have left. I’m going to have something to eat and drink so I have a bit of energy for my hike, then I’ll head off.”

**Okay. Please be careful. I know I say that a lot.**

He smiled a little at this. He had no words to describe how he felt being stranded in deep space, but knowing that there was someone back home worrying about him made him feel a whole lot better about it. “I’ll be careful, Meredith. I promise.”

He muted his communicator and started digging around in his backpack in search of something to eat, coming up with another pouch of chili macaroni. “I wish I could heat this up somehow,” he said as he tore it open.

As soon as he was done eating, and once he’d finished off most of a bottle of water, he stowed the empty ration pouch and the water bottle back inside his backpack. Once he had tied his helmet back onto his backpack, and with a quiet groan, one that made him feel a whole lot older than his nineteen years, he got back to his feet and resumed his hike toward the peak.

It wasn’t until he’d been walking for close to a couple of hours, humming old Radiohead songs as he skirted a crater in a desperate attempt to fill the silence that surrounded him, that he noticed something that he’d been hoping wasn’t happening.

“Oh no, no, no,” he said as he stared at his suit’s compass – or to be more precise, at the red needle that should have been consistently pointing north toward the peak. “Please don’t do this to me now…”

He quickly unmuted his communicator, hoping like hell that Meredith hadn’t gone to bed yet. “Meredith?”

**Yeah?**

“Something really, really weird is happening. I’ve been keeping an eye on it just out of the corner of my eye, because I didn’t want to say anything until I was totally, one hundred percent certain.” He let out a shaky sigh. “My IEVA suit’s compass is completely useless.”


	6. Part One :: Chapter 5

### Chapter 5

Meredith’s hand froze halfway to her mouth, the spoonful of macaroni and cheese she was eating for dinner coming dangerously close to falling in her lap. “Your compass is _what?_ ” she asked, as if she couldn’t quite believe what Taylor was telling her.

**It’s completely useless. I got to the rim of a crater a little way back and decided to just walk its perimeter, but the compass needle didn’t stay pointing north. It just…it spun completely at random, or it didn’t spin at all. It had absolutely nothing to do with the direction I was facing. That is NOT normal compass behaviour – if I know anything at all, I know that much.**

“Fuck.” Meredith put her spoon back in the bowl and pushed it all aside. “That really isn’t good.”

**Yeah, no shit. I mean, you remember it was acting all weird back in the caravel wreckage, right? I just thought that was a localised event, that whatever’d brought the ship down was playing havoc with my compass’ polarity somehow. And I thought that once I got far enough away, it’d start working again.**

“But it’s not.”

**Nope. And I don’t have a replacement. This is a disaster.**

“So what are you going to do now?”

**I could keep heading toward the peak – navigating by sight alone, obviously – but this is more than a bit worrying when I take into consideration the return trip. And the winds have been really calm for the last hour or so – my bootprints haven’t blown away or been filled in yet, so I can still see them. If I wanted to follow them back the way I just came, this would be the time to make that decision.**

Meredith didn’t even hesitate. Knowing what she did about where Taylor was stranded – which, admittedly, wasn’t that much – there was absolutely no question. “Turn back while you can,” she said. “It’s too dangerous to go any further right now.”

**Yeah, I think that’s the best idea. I mean, given Tau Ceti’s position in the sky, I’ve got less day ahead of me than I do behind. So long as I can still see my bootprints in the sand, I’ll be okay. If and when those disappear, I’ll have to navigate by landmarks – namely, the caravel wreckage and that massive crater.**

“Do you think you can make it back to the _Varia_ before dark?”

**If my luck holds out, yeah. Once I get there I might see if I can build a compass out of some spare parts. I think I still remember how to do that.**

“I’ll cross my fingers.” As if to emphasise what she’d said, even though out of the two of them she was the only one who could see the gesture, she crossed her right index and middle fingers and held her hand up.

**Thanks, appreciate it. Anyway, I’m headed back to the caravel. I’ll check in when I get there.**

“Please be safe,” she said softly almost at the instant that Taylor’s away message popped up onscreen, and swiped at her eyes. The absolute last thing she wanted to do was start crying in her residence hall’s communal dining room.

No longer hungry, and far too worried to eat anyway, she picked her bowl up and got to her feet. The remainder of the macaroni and cheese went in the rubbish, and she gave the bowl and spoon a quick rinse under the kitchen tap before putting them both in the dishwasher.

It felt like forever before she heard from Taylor again. She’d done her best to be productive while she was waiting for him to check in – doing readings for class and research for her last few assignments of the semester, watching YouTube videos recommended by her class professors, even starting on a draft of the essay that Dr. Adams had set the afternoon before – but her focus kept drifting across the room to where her phone was charging. The second her phone chimed, she was up off her bed and across the room so fast that she nearly tripped on the rug on the floor. “Please be okay, please be okay,” she chanted quietly as she unlocked her phone and got Lifeline open.

**I’m back in sight of the caravel wreckage** , were the first words she read, and she very nearly collapsed out of sheer relief. He was okay. **I never thought I’d be so grateful to see this haunted house of a starship again.**

“I’m glad you’re okay,” Meredith said as she went back to her bed, taking her phone with her. “How do things look?”

**Well, the generator is right where I left it. Which, of course, is exactly where it SHOULD be. Because, I mean, who was gonna take it? I’m all alone here, right? Right.**

“Right. How are you feeling?”

**Like death warmed up, to be totally honest. The rations I picked up back at the Varia will keep me going, sort of, but I’m pretty sure they weren’t meant to sustain someone going through this sort of thing. I need real food, and I need it soon.**

“And for that you need to get rescued.”

**Yep. From here, if I remember right, it’s more than a four hour walk back to the Varia. At least, that’s how long it took me to get from there to here earlier on. And that was WITH a working compass. Even worse, my headlamp’s totally dead. I can’t even get a flicker out of it anymore. I’ve still got a bunch of glow rods, though, so I wouldn’t be completely blind if I did decide to keep going.**

“So what’s your plan?”

**I have two options at this point. First option – I can keep going toward the Varia, and hope like hell I get there before I run out of light. Second option – I make camp here at the caravel, despite how terrifying that prospect is, and start working out how the fuck I’m going to stay warm tonight.**

Once again, Meredith didn’t even hesitate. “Make camp where you are. It’s really the best option you have right now.”

**Yeah, I think I have to agree with you. How fucked up is that, though – my best chance of surviving until morning is something straight out of my nightmares.**

Meredith let out a quiet laugh. “That _is_ pretty fucked up, yeah.”

**I thought you might agree with me. So. There’s absolutely no way I can sleep out under the stars tonight – the temperature drop is just going to be too severe. I’ll freeze to death. And just like back at the Varia, I have no way of closing any of the doors or the airlock here – there’s no power because again, no engine. But I think I have a way around that.**

“Oh?”

**Unlike the Varia, aside from the engine being missing the caravel is wholly intact. There’s only one opening to the outside.**

“The airlock,” Meredith realised.

**Exactly. And that airlock’s iris is open just barely enough for me to squeeze through – though I can tell you that I didn’t do my banged-up shoulder any favours doing that the last couple of times. Once I’m back inside, I think I can use some of the junk on the floor to seal over the iris from the inside.**

“That’s a really good idea. How are you going to keep warm, though?”

**I’m going to raid the med bay and the bunks. I saw a few of those aluminium emergency blanket things when I was in the med bay earlier, and I’m sure I can dig up some bedding from somewhere. I’ve still got my sleeping bag from back at the Varia, and I can wear my helmet with the faceplate down. All of that should keep me warm enough.**

“Good luck hunting.”

**Thanks.** He paused for a moment. **Cracked a glow rod – got nine left.** Here Meredith could almost see him grinning. **Time for a good old scavenger hunt.**

* * *

“I still hate this place. Thought it was worth mentioning.”

The interior of the caravel was just as terrifying as it had been earlier that day. Potentially more so, now that Taylor was fairly sure he knew what was lurking in the dark. A whole lot of scuttling somethings that glowed a sinister green. He shuddered at the thought of encountering those creatures again.

“So I can go back down one of the hallways to the east or the west, or I can try the flight deck. The flight deck feels like a complete waste of time, though, because I can tell from here that the control panels are smashed to bits.”

**Try one of the hallways then.**

“All right. Everyone loves a good highway excursion.” He aimed his newest glow rod at the rear of the ship and swung it around in a slow arc from left to right. “And seeing as I already explored the west hall, I’m going to head east. I’ll go have another poke around in the med bay after I get done there.”

With those words he began to very carefully pick his way across the floor, mindful with every step where he put his feet. Tripping over wasn’t something he wanted to do twice in the one day. “The side doors down the east hall are all sealed, like they are in the west hall, but the door at the end is open a bit,” he said as he made his way down the east hall. The floor in this part of the wreck wasn’t too deeply buried, so he was able to move a little faster. “And unfortunately,” he added once he’d reached the door at the end of the hall, and had spent a couple of minutes trying to force it open, “it’s not open far enough for me to get through. But I can see into the room – it’s the galley.”

He took his helmet off and leaned as close to the gap between the door and the corridor wall as he could, and stuck the glow rod he was using to light his way into the galley. “It’s a lot smaller than the galley on the _Varia_ , and it is a _mess_. Looks a bit like a snowglobe in there. Whole bunch of MREs strewn all over the floor and the counters.”

He drew back and straightened up. “I’ve got enough rations in my backpack to last me for a good little while,” he continued. “But it’s honestly a relief knowing that the galley here is pretty well stocked. Because if I get hungry enough, I _will_ find some way of getting through this stuck door. I can promise you that much.”

**You’re absolutely sure you can’t get in there?**

“Yeah. I even tried working the door using a piece of scrap as a lever, like I did back at the _Varia_ before I pulled my shoulder out of joint. Hasn’t moved so much as an inch. I mean, I can try it again once I’ve had some sleep, but for now I’m going to leave it.”

After a quick detour into the med bay for the emergency blankets he’d spotted earlier, he returned to the caravel’s main hall. “I almost forgot how much a mess the main hall is,” he said. “There’s enough junk in here that I could probably build myself a little robot friend out of spare parts to keep me company until I get picked up. Well, I _could_ if I knew much about building robots,” he amended. “I’m a science student, not a roboticist or an engineer.”

**Anywhere else to explore?**

“No, not really. I can’t get into any of the closed doors, so there’s just the flight deck left. Or what’s left of it, anyway.” As he spoke, he was very carefully picking his way across the floor to the flight deck. “Like I said earlier, the instrument panels are absolutely trashed. Not that this thing was ever going to take off again, what with the whole ‘missing its engine’ issue, but it looks like it’s all wrecked. Guidance, communications, waldo controls, everything – totally fucked.”

That was when he saw the one part of the flight deck that _hadn’t_ ended up trashed. “Huh. I guess I spoke too soon.”

**What did you find?**

He didn’t reply until he got closer to the flight deck’s computers. “It looks like a proximity alarm. Panel looks intact, but fuck knows whether or not the rest of the hardware is functional.” He studied it for a little while. “I’m not entirely sure I’m convinced that I _need_ an alarm system, to be honest. Pretty sure I’m all alone out here – weird, scuttling, ‘must have been my mind playing tricks on me’ noises notwithstanding. Plus it means I have to figure out how to hook it up to the generator, never mind that it all depends on if it even works, which as far as I’m concerned is a pretty big _if_. Still, I might leave this one up to you. What d’you think?”

**It can’t hurt to hook it up. Even if only to give yourself peace of mind that there’s really nothing out there.**

He blew out a breath that was only marginally less than frustrated. “I can’t help but feel like this is a gigantic waste of time, light and effort. All of which are in _really_ short supply around here. But all right. I’ll give it a go.” The glow rod he’d cracked to light his way in his earlier search for blankets had dimmed to the point where it was just about useless, so he reached into his backpack for another one. “All right, another glow rod cracked,” he said as he snapped it in half and started shaking it. “Only eight left.” He crouched in front of the panel for the proximity alarm and peered at it, holding the glow rod close so he could see it clearly. “Fortunately, the wires for this thing are mostly exposed. Maybe it won’t be that hard to get it patched in to the generator. Gimme a few minutes to mess with it.”

With those words he propped the glow rod against the bank of computers, picked up the generator, and set to work. He worked as quickly as he could, resisting the temptation to take his gloves off – the gloves’ silicone palms and fingers protected his fingertips from sharp points and edges, along with shielding his hands from electrical shocks (something he really didn’t need right at that moment), but at the cost of much-needed dexterity. He bit down on his bottom lip as he carefully connected the wires from the proximity alarm to the generator, pausing whenever a spark jumped out at him, until finally he was rewarded with a bright green light on the alarm and a working monitor. The smile he managed was tired but relieved, maybe even just a tiny bit elated.

“In what I’m calling nothing short of a miracle, I’ve not only got the alarm hooked up but I also got the monitor working. Whatever detection grid this thing projects, it actually appears to be putting out most of it.”

**‘Most of it’?**

“Yeah, the section of the grid for the rear of the ship says ‘No Readings’. Which is probably because there _is_ no rear of the ship anymore. You know, because the engine’s missing.”

He rubbed at his eyes with the back of his right hand and bit back a yawn. “All right then. I guess nobody’s going to steal my hubcaps while I get some sleep. This ship must’ve been designed for a really small crew. There’s literally a single mission-specialist chair up here. It’s half-uprooted, but whatever – it looks like my most comfortable option as far as sleeping arrangements go. I think it’s about time I called it a night. I’m gonna go seal over the airlock’s iris, then I’m hitting the hay.”

**Okay. Sleep well, and stay warm.**

Taylor managed another small, tired smile. “Thanks, Meredith. You too.”

It didn’t take him long to seal over the airlock’s iris to keep the worst of the cold out. That done, he returned to the flight deck and took his sleeping bag out of his backpack, unrolled and unzipped it, and draped it over the chair that was set to be his bed for the night. It definitely beat sleeping on the ground again. He lined the sleeping bag with all of the emergency blankets he’d found in the med bay and zipped himself into it, making sure that he wrapped himself in the blankets as tightly as he could, and did his best to get comfortable.

The very last thing he did before attempting to get some sleep was put his helmet back on, slide its faceplate down and lock it into place. A quiet chime sounded in his ear, half a second before the subroutine that controlled his IEVA suit’s oxygen tank kicked into gear. Satisfied that he likely wasn’t going to freeze or suffocate while he slept, he closed his eyes and let himself drift off.

He’d only been asleep for a few hours, dozing on and off, when he heard it.

“Huh?” His eyes shot open, and he blinked a few times in an attempt to focus. “Meredith? You say somethin’?”

There was no answer from his communicator, not even the friendly-sounding _beep_ that told him Meredith had replied to his newest message. He figured she was probably asleep. Even so, he went on talking – he had the feeling she would want to know about this. “I swear I just…no, I _definitely_ heard that weird scuttling sound again. The one I heard when I was in here earlier on. It’s coming from right behind me this time.”

He shifted around in the chair to try and get a better look at whatever it was that had produced the noise. And that was when he saw it. Out in the main corridor of the ship, low to the ground, was a bunch of glowing green lights. The lights were moving over the debris that covered the floor, making a rustling, scuttling sound.

“I, um…I just turned around in the chair, and…I saw it again, Meredith. Those fucking green lights are back.” A ripple of fear went down his back, and he shivered. “That’s just…no. No. I-I’m hallucinating. That’s the only explanation for any of this bullshit. Just my exhausted, terrified mind playing tricks on me. You ever see that really old _Ren & Stimpy_ cartoon, the ‘Space Madness’ bit? Like that.”

He shook his head. “I’m gonna go try and go back to sleep. Pretend that this chair is even remotely comfortable, which it isn’t, and that I’m going to fall right back asleep, which is _really_ fucking unlikely.”

He bit back a yawn. “And…and that when I wake up in the morning, there’ll be a rescue ship waiting for me with a whole buffet breakfast on board. Which seems _pretty_ fucking probable if you ask me.” With these words he shifted back around again and burrowed deeper into his sleeping bag. “G’night again.”

The second time he woke up that night, not even an hour and a half after he’d managed to drift back off to sleep, it was to one of the loudest alarms he had ever heard.

His eyes snapped open again as the high-pitched screeching of the proximity alarm went off, the noise drilling deep into his skull. It was so loud that he could hear it through his helmet, and he swore he could feel his heart stop for a moment or two. “Shit! That fucking alarm’s going off!” He squeezed his eyes shut and resisted the urge to take his helmet off so that he could block his ears. “So _this_ is what it feels like to go into cardiac arrest in deep space!”

Almost as soon as the alarm had started screeching, it fell silent again. He worked his arms out of the sleeping bag, hissing as they were exposed to the frigid air he could feel even through his IEVA suit, and shuffled forward so he could examine the alarm’s monitor screen. “There’s…there’s nothing on the monitor screen. For fuck’s _sake_ …you woke me up for _nothing_ , you bastard of a thing,” he grumbled. He tapped the screen a couple of times. “I mean, _obviously_ there’s nothing there. What’s gonna be there? I’m the only living _and_ conscious thing for who knows how many light years around here.”

He glared at the proximity alarm. “Fuck this noise. I’m unplugging this stupid alarm. I’m regretting hooking it up in the first place.” He shifted off the mission-specialist’s chair and switched the generator off, just barely holding himself back from completely disconnecting it from the alarm. That could wait until morning. “I am gonna go right ahead and say that tonight is definitely _not_ angling for a chance at a place in my ‘Best Sleep Ever’ hall of fame. Not by a long shot.”

Quietly hopeful that he wouldn’t be woken again that night, he went back to the chair and settled himself back into it. “Back to bed, such as it is. And if I’m woken up _again_ before morning, I won’t be happy.”

* * *

Meredith felt a little guilty as she scrolled through the messages that had landed in her Lifeline inbox while she’d been sleeping, especially when she reached the second batch that Taylor had sent. It had been her idea to hook the proximity alarm up to the generator, which mean the blame for his poor night’s sleep lay partially at her feet.

**Morning, which means it’s time to rise and shine. I’m rising, and I am definitely shining.**

“By which you mean…”

**Ever see The Shining?**

She scoffed silently. “Of course I’ve seen _The Shining_. It’s an iconic film.”

**I feel like Jack Nicholson did at the end. Intensely cold and more than a little crazy.**

“Hey, you might be cold as fuck this morning but you’re alive. That’s something to celebrate.”

**Point.** He was quiet for a few moments, and Meredith ate some of her breakfast while she waited for him to send another message. **Not trying to be gross here or anything, but this is the second morning in a row that my mouth** **’s felt like the bottom of my rats’ cage. AND when I rinsed my mouth out it was green. AGAIN.**

“You’re lucky I’m not easily grossed out, mister. I’m trying to eat my breakfast here.”

**Sorry. It’s just…last night I slept indoors, rather than outside, and I was nowhere near a source of radiation. This HAS to be something atmospheric, like I was getting it out of my system overnight. By-product of whatever it is I’m breathing whenever I don’t have my helmet on. I just wish I knew WHAT. Anyway, I guess I should figure out what the hell went wrong with the proximity alarm last night.**

“I’m sorry about that, by the way,” Meredith offered.

**S’all right. You weren’t to know that it was going to go off. I didn’t even know it would. Just assumed that because I’m the only conscious living being on this rock, nothing would even set it off.** He went quiet again, and Meredith figured he was getting the generator going again. **Okay, generator’s running and the alarm’s back online. I’m gonna scan back through its memory and see if I can figure out what set it off last night.**

“What do you think it might have been?”

**Best guess? A dust cloud got whipped up, or the winds were strong enough overnight to kick up some small rocks. I mean, look what they did to my escape pod. I’ll bet you anything that’s all that happened. I mean, it w-**

Here he broke off, and Meredith felt the same sense of dread that she did whenever Taylor suddenly dropped out of contact.

**This is so weird.**

“Can you stop _scaring_ me, please?” Meredith almost pleaded. “Everytime you suddenly stop talking without warning me first, I start thinking something’s happened to you!”

**Sorry. Didn’t mean to freak you out. It’s just…I’ve watched the footage a couple of times now. I keep rewinding and replaying it over and over again. If you’re watching quadrant 2 really, REALLY carefully, right at the very outskirts of the grid, something moves by and breaks the perimeter just for a second. It’s so quick that I’m honestly surprised it even got picked up. Something that looks like…** Here he trailed off, as if he was trying to work out just what he was looking at.

“It looks like what?” Meredith prompted gently.

**No. Never mind. It can’t be, there’s no way. I’m going crazy here by myself.**

“Whatever it is, I won’t think you’re crazy.”

**You promise?**

It was largely pointless, being as he couldn’t see what she was doing, but she held out her right hand in a fist with her pinky extended. “Pinky swear.”

**Okay then. Keep in mind that I know exactly how crazy this sounds, and that I can’t believe it myself. But it looks almost like…**

The next message that Taylor sent just about brought Meredith to her knees.

**It looks like a person.**


	7. Part One :: Chapter 6

### Chapter 6

_It looks like a person._

Meredith had to read those words more than a few times before they managed to sink in. “Are you absolutely certain?” she asked.

**I honestly don’t know. It’s all shadows. Plus it’s damn near impossible to make ANYTHING out on this monitor screen at this distance. Besides which, the human mind has a tendency to spot human-like shapes in random things. It’s called pareidolia.**

“I’ve heard of that. It’s what happens when people think they see the Virgin Mary in water stains or things like that, right?”

**Right! Or even smiley faces in car grilles and headlights. I’m probably more prone to it than anyone else right now, seeing as there’s no other living, conscious being out here. I’m desperately seeking the familiar, so of course I’m going to see shit like that. So even though what I’m seeing looks like a person EVERY SINGLE TIME that I rewind it, I know that realistically, it ISN’T a person. It can’t be. But it looks so much like it is.**

Somewhat to Meredith’s surprise, Taylor’s next words seemed hesitant. **You believe me, right?**

“Hey, if you say you saw something, then you saw something. You gonna keep looking at the footage?”

**I could. I know myself better than I know anyone else, and I know that I could keep doing this all day long. But it doesn’t matter how many times I watch it, I see that shape every single time. And every single time I have to remind myself that I’m not really seeing it.** Meredith swore she could hear him let out a sigh. **This is giving me a headache. I’m gonna get myself some breakfast and stop worrying about whatever it is I’m seeing. That’s what normal people do in the morning, right?**

“I wouldn’t say I’m _normal_ , per se, but I’m having my breakfast right now so yeah, I’d say so.”

**Oh good. Despite the fact that I’ve been stranded in deep space for the last, what, three days now, I want to do as many normal things as possible. So, just like a normal person, I’m going to chow down on an MRE of, let’s see…oh lovely. Lemon pepper tuna. The breakfast of champions.**

Meredith hid a smile. Even without hearing him speak, the sarcasm in Taylor’s words was crystal clear. “Sounds delicious.”

**Sarcasm doesn’t always come across in print, but I’m gonna go ahead and assume you were being sarcastic. Purely because I’m pretty sure it’s impossible to discuss the topic of ‘fish for breakfast’ without a heavy dose of it.**

“That was most definitely sarcasm.”

They were both quiet for a few minutes while they each ate. Meredith had just finished chasing the last few cornflakes around her bowl when Taylor’s next message landed on her phone. **Okay then. Finished with breakfast, which is honestly the most charitable way I can think of to describe it. Beggars can’t be choosers and all that. The way I see it, today is all about reaching that peak. I’m hoping like hell that my inability to get there yesterday was just a combination of exhaustion and optical illusion. I’ve got a full day ahead of me this time, so I’m liking my odds a whole lot better today. I also like knowing that this caravel, nightmarish as it is, and the generator I found yesterday are waiting for me on my way back to the Varia later on. I’ll be able to fire up the distress beacon so I can hopefully get out of here, or else the gun turret on the off chance that there really IS something else out here besides me. So what do you think? Figure I can make it to the peak today?**

“Oh hell yes,” Meredith said. “I completely agree with you. You’d be mad _not_ to give it a go. You’ve come too far now not to.”

**Exactly what I was thinking. Give me a few minutes to pack some munchies for the hike and stow the generator somewhere safe, and then I’ll be on my way. I’ll let you know when I’m headed out.**

While Taylor was busying himself with getting ready to head out to the peak, Meredith glanced around the dining hall. It was a Saturday, so it seemed to her as if the other students who called her residence hall home were taking advantage of the weekend by either sleeping in or having a long, leisurely breakfast. She was sorely tempted to join the latter group, but thought better of it. Instead, she picked up her breakfast bowl and headed into the kitchen to drop it off in the dishwasher. She had plans for her Saturday that didn’t involve being cooped up inside staring at the screen of her laptop or her tablet.

Her wanderings that morning led her across campus to the botanical gardens that lay on the university’s southeastern border. Just as she stepped into the gardens’ outdoor amphitheatre her phone vibrated and chimed in her pocket, but she chose to leave checking it until she was settled on one of the benches in the amphitheatre’s back row, leaning against the trunk of a spreading gingko tree.

**Just stuck my head out of the caravel and caught what was, honestly, one of the most impressive sunrises I’ve ever seen. It’s stunning. Even if it is Tau Ceti and not Sol, but you know what? I’m gonna go ahead and count it.**

“You definitely should,” Meredith replied. Down at the front of the amphitheatre she could see a knot of Girl Scouts crowded around their troop leader, with a trio of teenage boys bent over a tablet on a bench in the middle row. “What does it look like?”

**Lots of pink, orange, yellow and purple. I wish my helmet’s camera was working so I could take a photo of it.** Meredith smiled at this. **So first of all, let’s just be impressed that I was up and at ‘em before first light. That hasn’t happened in…well, ever. If my mother ever finds out she’ll faint.**

“Not a morning person?”

**Fuck no. I hate early mornings with a passion. My weirdo brothers are the ones who like getting up at the crack of dawn.**

She laughed softly. “I think I have to agree with you. Early mornings are horrible.”

**Nice to see that SOMEONE does. Second of all, I think I should mention that while I had my head outside the caravel, I could see a weird green corona around the peak. It was just a few degrees away from natural-looking, and to be totally honest with you it weirded me right out.**

“Did it look anything like the green lights that woke you up last night?”

**Yeah, it did actually.**

Meredith shivered a little. “That can’t be good.”

**Yeah, no kidding. Oh, and third of all, my IEVA suit’s compass is still acting all screwy. I guess I don’t REALLY need it for hiking to the peak – so long as I have line of sight, it shouldn’t be a problem to get there.**

“It can’t hurt to have one handy, though.”

**True. And I bet I could cobble one together out of spare parts before I head off. It’d literally take me a few minutes. Think I should?**

“Yeah, do it.”

She was pretty sure that if she could have seen Taylor right then, he would have given her the biggest smile imaginable – one that she was positive could have lit up an entire room. **Oh, this is going to be fun.**

* * *

**So how exactly are you going to make this compass of yours?**

Meredith’s question popped up on his communicator just as he was poking through the caravel’s medkit for a couple of needles. He paused briefly to consider his answer, squinting a little as he thought it over.

“Basically, the most important thing is that the compass face is able to float frictionless while it spins,” he replied as he found the needles he needed. He carefully poked them through the fabric of his sleeping bag so that he didn’t lose them. “The last time I made a compass, I used a bowl of water. I’m not about to try balancing one of those while I’m hiking all day, though, I don’t have enough water to spare and I’d probably end up spilling it anyway. I’ll balance the face of the compass on a pushpin or something like that.”

He zipped the medkit closed again and rose up out of his crouch. “I found a couple of needles, so the next thing I need to do is magnetise them so that when I’ve got my compass put together, it points north. And for that I need a magnet, preferably a rare earth one. Fortunately for me, there’s a whole bank of computers here in the flight deck that aren’t using their hard drives right now.”

**So you’re going to smash the shit out of them?**

He grinned. “I am going to smash the absolute shit outta those computers. Gotta take all my frustration out on _something_ , after all. I bet I could find a mallet around here somewhere.”

It didn’t take him long at all to disassemble the flight deck computers. While he hadn’t been able to find a mallet, the piece of scrap he’d used to try and get into the galley the day before was a decent substitute. From there it was just a simple matter of getting the magnet out of one of the hard drives and rubbing it on the needles he’d found to magnetise them and ensure that when his compass was complete, it pointed north.

“And we are _done!_ ” he said triumphantly as he finished his compass. “I magnetised the needles, stuck them on a bit of plastic MRE wrapper, mounted it all on a bent paperclip and couched the lot in a piece of PVC tubing. Time to go test it.” He picked up his backpack and helmet and headed for the airlock, setting them outside on the ground before climbing out. As soon as he was upright he held the compass up in the direction of the peak. To his relief, it seemed to be unaffected by the distortion that had rendered his original compass completely useless. “It’s not pretty, but it actually seems to work. And by that, I mean it points toward the peak and tells me that’s north.” He glared down at his suit’s compass. “Which is a hell of a lot more than my suit’s compass can do right now. Score one for the indoor kid!”

**Are you headed off now?**

“Yep. I’ll message you in a while.”

With those words he tied his helmet onto its spot on his backpack, giving the knot in the rope a few quick tugs to make sure it was secure, and slipped his arms through the pack’s straps. “Well, here we go,” he said to himself as he hoisted it onto his shoulders. “Weird-ass peak or bust.”

Even though he could no longer see his bootprints from the day before, he found himself retracing his steps to the little crater that lay due north of the caravel wreckage. “Okay, I reached this point yesterday,” he said as he reached its other side, having walked around its perimeter. “The crater where I realised that my suit’s compass was acting up, even though I was like five miles from the wreck.” He held his left wrist up at eye level, with his new compass alongside in his right hand. “And that’s still the case today. My suit compass is nuttier than two squirrels in a winter food hoarding competition.” He pulled a face at it and shifted his attention to his right hand. “My homemade compass, on the other hand, seems to be working perfectly – whatever distortion fucked up my original compass, it hasn’t had any effect on the new one. At least none that I can see, anyway.”

**That has to be a relief.**

“You have _no_ idea. Like I said earlier, I don’t _need_ it, but it does make sure I’m actually heading north. What with the whole ‘getting further away the closer I get’ thing.” A thought drifted into his head. “Maybe they should have got me to scratch-build the _Varia_ , too. Might’ve stayed in one piece if I’d had a go at it.”

**Good Lord, Taylor. That was fucking DARK.**

He closed his eyes briefly and scrubbed a hand across them. “Yeah, it was a bit, wasn’t it? Sorry.”

Here he looked up at the peak and its poisonous green corona, the colour making him feel cold all over. It was almost as if its existence was taunting him. “Once again, I don’t feel like I’m any closer to the peak. And once again, I’m wondering whether I should even keep going.”

**You’ve got this far. Might as well see what’s up.**

“Yeah, okay. Plenty of daylight ahead of me, finite amount of moon. If I keep putting one foot in front of the other enough times, I’m bound to get _somewhere_.” Here he swallowed hard. “Or die trying.”

**Please don’t die.**

“I’ll do my best not to, Meredith. I can promise you that much.”

With those words he put his head down and continued his hike north, wishing that he didn’t feel so alone.

* * *

**Well, the good news is that I haven’t died trying.**

Meredith paused Netflix when her phone chimed and Taylor’s newest message popped up on its screen. She’d wandered back to her dorm room not long after he’d resumed his hike, picking up some snacks from the convenience store in the student rec centre on her way through campus, and was in the middle of bingeing _Monty Python’s Flying Circus_ when the notification came through.

“I’m really glad to hear that, Tay,” she said. “I won’t lie, I’m relieved as hell that you haven’t.” She paused briefly. “You don’t mind me calling you that, do you?”

**All my friends and family do, so yeah you can call me that.**

“You can call me Mere, in that case.”

**Mere it is.** She was positive that she could see Taylor smiling at this. **The bad news though? I honestly can’t tell whether or not I’ve gotten any closer. I swear that all of time and space and perspective have all taken a little vacation right in the vicinity of that weird as fuck peak. One second I’ll look up and I’ll be almost there, then I’ll blink and it looks like it’s ten fucking miles away again. It’s so frustrating.**

“I bet,” she said sympathetically. “You’ve gotta be close, though. You’ve been hiking for how long now?”

**Way too long at this point. Thinking of having a snack break before I get back to it.**

“Yeah, go for it. I think you’ve earned it.”

**Sweet! I’m gonna go with the first MRE I dig up.** There was a bit of quiet while he – presumably, Meredith thought – rummaged around in his backpack. **And the winner is…chili with beans. Hmm. I’ve heard people say that chili with beans isn’t proper chili at all. What do you think?**

“No beans,” Meredith replied automatically. “Ever.”

**Yeah, I’m gonna agree with you. I just tried this MRE and they really should have left them out.** He seemed to consider this for a little while. **Actually, they probably should have left the chili out entirely.**

“Not great, I take it?”

**It’s really not. Though it might be halfway tolerable if I had any way of heating it up. Still, I’m glad we solved that particular riddle. Promise me something, though?**

“Yeah, sure.”

**If I end up dying out here on this stupid moon, please make sure that there’s chili WITHOUT BEANS at my wake. Okay?**

“You got it.”

**Much appreciated. I’m going to finish eating, then it’s back to hiking. Check back in soon.**

His away message flashed up almost as soon as he had finished speaking, and Meredith went back to her _Monty Python_ marathon – or rather, she tried to. Almost as soon as she hit play again there was a frantic-sounding knock at her door, one that made her let out a frustrated sigh.

When she peered through the peephole and saw Quinn standing there, a stricken look on her face and clutching onto her tablet like it was a lifeline, every shred of frustration she was feeling evaporated immediately.

“Quinn?” she asked as soon as she got the door open. “Everything okay?”

“Did Taylor say how long it had been since he left Earth?” Quinn asked in lieu of a hello.

Meredith frowned a little as she thought back over the conversations she’d had with her astronaut friend, all of the messages the two of them had sent back and forth since Thursday, and tried to remember if there had been any mention of how long he’d been in space. “As far as I can remember, no,” she said at last. “All he’s ever said about it is that he was supposed to get to someplace called Tau Ceti VI in six days, and that was a couple of days ago.” She eyed Quinn. “I really don’t like the look on your face right now. Usually it means you’ve got bad news.”

“‘Bad news’ is one hell of an understatement, Meredith.”

The second that Meredith’s full first name left Quinn’s mouth, rather than her nickname, she immediately knew that her friend meant business. “I can count on one hand the number of times you’ve called me that,” she said, a cold knot of fear beginning to form somewhere in the region of her stomach.

Quinn put a hand on Meredith’s right shoulder. “Come on. I think you’d better sit down for this.”

The two of them were soon seated on Meredith’s bed – Meredith at its head, and Quinn in the middle. Quinn had put a pillow in Meredith’s lap before settling herself, with Meredith instinctively picking it up and hugging it. Whatever it was that Quinn had to say, she knew it couldn’t be good.

“I, uh…I found an article about that mission Taylor’s on,” Quinn started. She was still clutching the tablet tightly, her knuckles white. “It said that contact had been lost five weeks into the mission, with the presumed loss of all crew members.”

“But we know different,” Meredith said. “We know that Taylor and his captain survived the crash. And it’s, what, the start of December now – five weeks ago, that’s only the start of November. It hasn’t been _that_ long since he left. And he’s going to get the distress beacon he found working once he gets done exploring this weird peak he saw the day of the crash.” She offered Quinn a smile that she hoped was reassuring. “They’ll find him, Quinn, and he’ll make it home. I know he will.”

When Quinn didn’t return her smile, she immediately knew something had gone very wrong.

“Meredith…” Quinn unlocked the tablet and held it out, its screen displaying a NASA press release. “Look at the date.”

As she took the tablet from Quinn and found the date that the article had been published, the knot of fear Meredith could feel deep inside became a tight fist around her heart. “Oh my God,” she whispered, horror-struck.

The date read **December 8, 2202**.

“He’s been missing for two years,” Quinn said quietly.

Meredith put the tablet down on the bed and dropped her head into her hands. “What are we going to do, Quinn? How am I going to tell him that everyone back here thinks he _died_ two years ago?”

“I don’t know, Mere,” Quinn replied. “I honestly don’t know.”

* * *

It had taken him a good few hours of hiking, but as soon as Taylor crested the hill that he had been climbing for the last twenty minutes he felt the biggest smile that he was capable of erupt on his face – one that could only be described as _relieved_. Before him was a gigantic crater, one even bigger than the one he’d walked around the day before, with the peak he’d been trying to reach for the last few days seated right at its centre. The impulse to just go charging ahead was incredibly strong, but he held himself back. Before he did anything, there was one person back home who needed to know what he was about to do.

“I’ve finally been able to make some real, noticeable progress,” he said once he was sitting on the edge of the crater, feet dangling down into it. “I’m at the edge of another crater – a fucking _enormous_ one that’s going to take some serious rappelling into if I’m going to get to the bottom anytime soon.”

**That deep, huh?**

“Oh yeah. Wanna hear the best bit?”

**Lay it on me.**

“The base of the peak is right at the centre of the crater, at the absolute deepest point. So as long as I can keep an eye on it, that stupid peak isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Well, in theory, at least,” he amended. “Knowing my luck, I’ll blink and it’ll disappear on me again.”

**I really hope you didn’t jinx yourself. That’s really good news, though.**

“Yeah, I hope I didn’t jinx myself either.” He leaned forward over his knees a little and peered down into the crater. “It’s a hell of a long way down, though, and I don’t have any climbing equipment. Makes it sound pretty dangerous now that I think about it. I have no idea if I can even get down safely, or how I’d get back out again.”

He straightened back up again and stared at the peak. Now that he was the closest to it that he’d been since the crash, its presence was making him feel increasingly uneasy. If not for the fact that he was so determined to get to the bottom of how and why the _Varia_ had crashed on this exact moon, he would have turned around and fled in the other direction.

“So what d’you say, Mere? Ready to find out what’s up with that peak?”

**Oh hell yeah. You’ve come too far now NOT to find out.**

“Exactly what I was thinking.” He got back to his feet and stepped back from the edge a little. “I’m gonna see if there’s anywhere I can climb down relatively safely. Gimme a few minutes.”

Soon enough, he had found a nearby section of the crater wall that looked relatively easy to climb down – ‘relatively easy’ being a relative term, of course. “There’s a part of the crater wall that’s got a decent amount of crags and footholds,” he said once he’d given the section he’d picked a once-over. “In the absence of ropes and carabiners, I guess that a few shallow divots in the rock is as good as it’s gonna get.”

**At least you have a helmet.**

“Yeah, good point. Though I’m not sure how much good it’ll do me if I fall off the wall halfway down. Not that something like that’s gonna happen,” he added hurriedly. “Other than that though, what’s the worst thing that could happen to me? I end up sawing off my own arm with a blunt Swiss Army knife like the _127 Hours_ guy?” He untied his helmet from its spot on his backpack and put it on, raising the faceplate and visor once the clamps were locked into place. “You know, now that I think about it, that actually _does_ sound like the worst thing that could happen.”

**I bet you’re really glad now you didn’t try to climb over that boulder back on the first day.**

“You have _no_ idea.” He gave the peak one last look before turning around so that his back was to the crater. “Wish me luck?”

**Good luck.**

“Thanks. I think I’m definitely going to need it, as much as I was hoping otherwise.” He closed his eyes for a few moments to steady himself. “Is it okay with you if I go dark for a while? I really do like talking to you, but this is something I really need to fully concentrate on.”

**Yeah, of course it is.**

“I appreciate it. If you never hear from me again, then it’s because I ended up pulling a _127 Hours_ stunt like I was afraid of.” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Okay. Down I go. Talk to you soon.”

He muted his communicator and braced himself, before stepping backwards and putting his left foot down over the edge of the crater, hunting blindly for the first foothold.

_It’s just like the last few days of hiking_ , he told himself as he slowly made his way down the crater wall. _One foot in front of the other.  
_


	8. Part One :: Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to **Sugoi_Argonian_Maid** and my anonymous readers for leaving kudos. <3
> 
> Also: Part One of this story is DONE. I have at least two more parts left to write, so there's plenty more story to come.

### Chapter 7

Meredith did her best to distract herself during the half hour that Taylor was climbing down the crater wall. It was the first time in the three days they’d known each other that he had deliberately cut off contact between them – while she knew why, and was completely fine with the reason, it didn’t make her any less anxious. What he was currently attempting to do was incredibly dangerous, and she knew that she wouldn’t be able to breathe properly again until she knew that he had made it safely to the bottom of the crater.

“I’m not going to tell him,” she said. She and Quinn had gone out to the courtyard at the back of the residence hall for some fresh air, knowing full well that Meredith wouldn’t be able to distract herself if she was cooped up in her dorm room with her laptop and tablet within reach. The sole electronic device that Quinn had allowed Meredith to take outside was her phone, so that she would know when Taylor checked back in again. “At least, not yet. He needs to concentrate on getting down that wall first.”

“That’s probably the best idea you’ve had all year,” Quinn teased her, and Meredith flipped her the bird. “But I get where you’re coming from – the fewer distractions he has right now, the better.” She traced a design that someone had scratched in the wooden table the two of them were sitting at, following the spiral with a fingernail. “What about after that, though? He needs to find out at some point.”

“I know he does. And I will tell him. I’d be the world’s worst friend if I didn’t.” Meredith dropped her gaze to her lap and started picking at a rip in the left knee of her jeans. “How could this happen, though? How does a starship just…disappear? It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Maybe it’s a sort of spacey Bermuda Triangle,” Quinn ventured.

“Maybe,” Meredith echoed. “But more to the point, how the hell has it been two years since that ship vanished, but I’m only just now talking to Taylor? That’s the bit I don’t understand.”

Whatever Quinn might have said next was interrupted by the familiar chime of the Lifeline app. “Hold that thought,” Meredith said as she grabbed her phone, unlocked it and swiped a thumb down from the top of the screen to open the notifications panel. Right there at the top, underneath her phone’s screen brightness meter, was a new message from Taylor.

**I made it! Couple of minor mishaps along the way, but who doesn’t love a bit of an adrenaline rush from time to time?**

“Thank goodness you’re all right,” Meredith said once she had the app properly open. “I was really worried, Tay.” Here she did a tiny double take. “Hang on, what do you mean by ‘mishaps’?”

**I hurt my shoulder again. Pushed myself a lot harder than I intended to and now I’m really paying for it. Fucking thing’s screaming at me right now. I could really use a painkiller, in that I have pain that would benefit from being killed.**

“How many do you have left again?”

**Two. If I take one right now then I’ve only got one left after that.**

“Take it, Tay. You sound like you really need it.”

**I really, really do. Pretty sure the relief’s going to be worth it, though. I just hope it kicks in quickly because I can barely raise my left arm above shoulder height. I tried a few minutes ago and the pain was so bad that I almost passed out.**

“You are going to need some serious physical therapy once you get back home.”

**Yeah, no kidding.** There was a short pause while – Meredith figured, anyway – Taylor took one of his remaining painkillers. **I really can’t overstate how big of a bowl this crater is, especially now that I’m down inside of it. It’d take me hours to get to the other side. But the main thing is that the peak is finally within reach. That fucker isn’t going anywhere – as long as I keep walking in that direction, I’ll eventually get there. And my rattletrap compass tells me I’m still pointed north, so I guess I get my merit badge for that.**

“So are you headed off now?”

**Yep. I’ve got a long, slow walk ahead of me, so I’ll check back in when I’m a bit closer.**

As soon as Taylor had set off again, Meredith put her head down on the table and just cried. All of the fear and anxiety she had felt over the last half an hour, coupled with the sheer relief that Taylor had survived his climb down into the crater, was almost too much for her to bear, and it all had to escape somehow.

Without even missing a beat Quinn got up from her seat on the other side of the table and hurried around to where Meredith sat. “Mere, he’s going to be all right,” she tried to reassure Meredith. “I promise, he’ll be okay.”

“I know,” Meredith mumbled. She pulled the left sleeve of her shirt down over her hand and wiped her face off on it. “Doesn’t stop me being worried about him.”

Quinn didn’t respond to this. Instead, she offered Meredith a smile that she very hesitantly tried to return. “Come on. You need to get out of here for a while. We’ll go get ice cream or something.”

“Yeah, okay,” Meredith agreed. “That sounds good to me.”

* * *

He’d been hiking for a little more than an hour when it happened again. The second he realised that something very strange was going on, he immediately unmuted his communicator.

“Hey Mere? Things are…” He looked up at the peak again, feeling more than a little uneasy. “Things are a little weird. Mind if I unload?”

**You know I don’t mind. Lay it on me.**

“Thanks.” He tried his hardest not to sound too relieved, even though he knew it wouldn’t be obvious what he was feeling – as far as he was aware, all Meredith was getting from him was text, no sound or vision. “So…you know how this peak has seemed to sort of, I don’t know, stay _just_ out of reach?”

**Yeah…**

“I thought it was just an optical illusion. Like, I had to be getting closer to it the further I walked, but all the hills and valleys on this stupid moon kept playing tricks with my perspective and making it seem like it was a lot further away than it actually was. But now I’m not so sure. And I know this sounds crazy, but…” He trailed off. “No, never mind. It sounds crazy because let’s face it – it _is_ crazy.”

**Oh come on, tell me. Please?**

“You’re sure?”

**You’ve told me lots of crazy shit the last few days. I think I can handle a bit more.**

“Okay. But never say you weren’t warned.” Another glance up at the peak, almost as if he was making sure it was still there. “I think the peak might actually be sort of…wavering. In, like, an existential sense. I’ll be looking at it, then I’ll blink and for just a second, it won’t be there anymore. Then it reappears, and I start questioning my sanity. It’s happened something like half a dozen times since I got down into this crater.”

**Okay, that IS weird.**

“I know, right? It’s not the only batshit crazy thing, though. You might want to brace yourself.” As he was saying this, he lowered himself to his knees and rocked back a little. “Here’s what’s really tripping me out. I’ve been walking for about an hour now, maybe a bit more than that, more or less making a beeline for the peak. And just a minute ago I looked down, and there was another set of bootprints in the sand.” He resisted the temptation to reach out and touch the bootprints, as if that would make them more real. Just seeing them was freaking him the hell out. “I mean, they’re exactly the same size and shape as mine. It’s like I’m doubling back on my own path, even though I know I’m not. How the hell is that even possible?”

**It definitely isn’t. Not as far as I know anyway.**

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell myself. I _know_ they can’t be mine, but it’s freaking me the fuck out regardless. They’re exactly my size, exactly the same tread pattern that I’ve got on my boots.” He shook his head a little. “I don’t know. I’m not sure how I could be walking in a straight line, but at the same time be walking around in circles. It makes zero sense.”

He let out a sigh and got back to his feet, stretching a little as he moved. “Honestly, I don’t want to think about it anymore. I’m just gonna put my head back down and keep on walking forward.”

He did just that for the next three quarters of an hour – walking forward, one foot in front of the other, like he’d done during each of his hikes over the last few days. Like he’d done with the climb down the crater wall – something that neither of his parents were _ever_ going to find out about. He knew he would never hear the end of it if they did.

The next time he looked up, it was to find a towering monolith of white stone rising up before him, and he sucked in a sharp, shocked breath. He’d known the peak was big, but not _this_ big. “Holy _shit_ ,” he breathed as his eyes tracked upwards, trying to find the very top. He felt the same as he had with the crater the day before – that if not for the fact that he was still utterly terrified of the prospect of dying alone in deep space, he would be more than a little awed. “Mere, I’m here,” he once he’d fumbled for his communicator. “I’m finally, actually here. I sort of can’t believe it.”

**It’s about damn time.**

“I know, right? And yeah, I know that a lot of the time people talk about how they thought they’d never achieve whatever goal they had, but I think that’s mostly hyperbole. Not for me, though. I _literally_ never thought I’d make it here.”

**What does it look like up close?**

“Well for starters, it’s a lot bigger than I thought it was. It isn’t just taller, but it’s bigger around at the base.” He stepped back a little, trying not to crane his neck too much as he looked upwards. “And something like fifty yards to my left there’s this little recessed area in the rock. I’m not entirely sure I want to see what it is just yet, if it’s even anything. I just don’t want any more surprises, good or bad. I’m not entirely sure I could handle it. I’m gonna just scout the perimeter for now.”

And with those words he headed off to his right, trailing the fingers of his left hand along the side of the peak as he walked. _No more surprises_ , he pleaded silently as he walked. _Please._

* * *

**Okay, so, first impressions** , Taylor was saying as Meredith and Quinn wandered out of the ice cream shop on campus, each with an ice cream in hand. They found a free table outside and settled down at it, Meredith propping her phone up against the stem of the table’s umbrella so that the two of them could both read what Taylor was saying. **Like I said on the first day I was here, squinting at this thing all that way from the Varia, it looks oddly geometrically perfect.**

“How do you mean?” Meredith asked, about half a second before starting in on her scoop of green tea ice cream.

**It’s almost like it was CARVED out of the rock, rather than forming naturally. Mountains usually get that way through erosion and upheaval, not because someone went chipping away at it with a hammer and chisel. And yes, I am very aware that it sounds crazy to say that this peak looks built, but let’s face it – it’s not the craziest thing I’ve said so far.** After a short pause, he added, **That was supposed to sound comforting, but it definitely didn’t come out that way. Sorry. Anyway, the thing to keep in mind here is- HOLY SHIT.**

“What? What is it?”

**You’re not going to believe this. Not in a million years. Hell I’m looking at it right now, and I can barely believe what I’m seeing.**

“Should I brace myself?”

**Yeah, might be a good idea. You should probably be sitting down as well.** Another pause. **There’s writing on the outer wall of the peak.**

Quinn very nearly spat out her mouthful of rocky road. “There’s _what?_ Writing? Are you serious?”

**I am deadly serious.**

“How is that even _possible?_ ” Meredith asked. “You said it yourself, you’re the only living, conscious being on that moon right now.”

**That I know of.**

“Okay, yes, that you know of,” Meredith amended.

**I swear to all that is holy, every moment I spend out here I feel like I ratchet up the crazy another ten degrees. I don’t know how much more of this I can take, Mere. I really don’t.**

Just reading those words made Meredith want to give Taylor the biggest hug she was capable of. She was fairly sure he needed one, whether he knew it or not. “Jesus, Taylor,” Quinn whispered. Meredith found her hand under the table and gave it a squeeze.

**Here’s the worst part about the writing** , he continued. **I have absolutely no idea what it says.**

“Yeah, that’s not ominous _at all_ ,” Quinn commented.

**It’s…I’m like ninety-nine percent sure it’s Chinese characters, which I absolutely do not read. And the caravel looked like it was of Chinese origin, if that bottle of painkillers I found is any indication. Does that mean…did someone actually SURVIVE that wreck? Did they make it to this peak? And how the fuck did we never hear about a Chinese ship being scuttled on this moon? ESPECIALLY if there was a survivor?**

“Taylor, breathe,” Meredith said, hoping to stave off a panic attack.

**I’m trying, Mere. I promise. It’s just…Jesus fucking Christ. Could their national space agency really have covered this up? WHY would they have covered up something like this?**

“More to the point, what went wrong?” Quinn added.

**Yeah, exactly. Maybe I’ll find out if I ever get off this stupid rock. Meredith swore she could hear Taylor let out a sigh at these words. I don’t think there’s much else I can do, other than keep on walking around this thing. Wish I had a Chinese-to-English dictionary on me. Hell, even a translator app thingamajig would do. I could really use either one right about now.**

“I wish I could give him a hug,” Quinn said as Taylor went silent again. “He needs one.”

“That’s the first thing I’m doing once he’s home and I can meet up with him,” Meredith said. “I mean, if he lets me.”

“Oh yeah, of course. But I feel like he’s the sort of person who’d be up for a hug regardless.”

“I really hope so.”

The two of them were quiet while they finished their ice creams. “Do you regret it?” Quinn asked suddenly, and Meredith almost choked on a bit of waffle cone. “Answering him, I mean.”

“Honestly?”

Quinn raised a slender blonde eyebrow at Meredith. “I always want you to be honest, Mere.”

“Just checking.” Meredith considered her answer for a little while. “No. I don’t regret it. How could I? He needed help, and I get the impression that he really needed a friend as well. Especially after he found out that everyone else apart from his captain didn’t survive the crash. And he’s got both out of me.” She ducked her head a little. “I hope that after he makes it home he’ll still want me as a friend.”

“I’m sure he will, Mere. He’d be mad not to,” Quinn assured her, and she smiled.

Her ice cream finished, Meredith pushed her chair back from the table and stood up. “I need to go work on that essay for Adams,” she said. “I’d really rather not be scrambling to finish it the night before it’s due.”

“I’m betting you need a distraction from that as well,” Quinn said, motioning to Meredith’s phone.

“Yeah, a little bit,” Meredith admitted. She picked her phone up, locked it and slipped it into a pocket. “It’s just…it’s killing me, not being able to do anything to help him.”

“You’re making sure he survives,” Quinn said. “Physically as well as mentally. I wouldn’t say that’s not being able to do anything.”

“That’s true.” Meredith looked at Quinn. “What would I do without you?”

“Sit in a corner and go quietly mad, probably,” Quinn replied, before nodding in the general direction of their residence hall. “Come on. That essay ain’t gonna write itself.”

* * *

“What the actual _fuck?_ ”

One moment, Taylor’s homemade compass had been working just fine – the next, its face had started spinning and jumping like a fish on the end of a line. “Oh no, no, no, no, don’t you fucking _dare_ do this to me now,” he snapped at it. “Meredith? You there?”

**Always, Tay. What’s up?**

“I was just walking around the outside of the peak with my little makeshift compass, watching its face moving along with me like it’s supposed to” here he sent his compass a quick glare “when all of a sudden it started jumping backward and forward, and spinning all over the place like a kid at a dance party who’s taken some really good drugs. Not that I’d know anything about that,” he added hurriedly.

**Of course you wouldn’t** , Meredith replied, and Taylor bit back a small smile at how amused she seemed. **Hang on, is it supposed to do that?**

“No, it’s not. It is definitely _not_ supposed to go spinning and jumping around like it’s a fish I just caught! This is exactly what my old compass…”

Here he trailed off, catching sight of a bright green shimmer just out of the corner of his eye. He whipped his head around just in time to see the green shimmer intensify to an almost blinding white, right before the peak vanished in less time than it would have taken him to blink.

**Your old compass what? What’s going on?**

“Um…” He reached out a hand to where the peak had been just seconds before and waved it around a bit. “The peak just…it’s gone. Vanished right in front of me – there’s nothing there.”

**Did you see anything before it disappeared?**

“Yeah, this bright green shimmer. Exactly the same colour as those lights I saw last night.” He shuddered a little. “This is creepy as fuck.”

Right as he spoke these words the green shimmer returned, and he yanked his hand away again – just in time for the peak to reappear, and for his compass to start working properly once more. “Okay, the peak’s back, and my compass is back to normal,” he said, the hairs on the back of his neck standing right on end. “I just… _what the actual fuck was that?_ ”

**That is fucking insane.**

“It is. It absolutely is insane. But I am definitely _not_ insane. I couldn’t be more certain of what just happened. I could have believed that everything up until this point was nothing more than a very weird optical illusion – a trick of the light, maybe even my exhausted brain doing its best to put one over on me. But this?” He waved a hand at the peak, which by now had lost its green shimmer. “I was _right here_ when it happened. Th-this was some next-level, otherworldly shit.”

**No kidding. Are you all right, apart from being a bit freaked out?**

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine. Just going to keep walking around the magic disappearing man-made moon mountain. That’s a normal thing people say, right?”

He couldn’t see or hear Meredith, but he was almost certain she had just burst out laughing, a thought that made him smile a little.

It wasn’t much longer after the disappearance and subsequent reappearance of the peak that he finished his walk around it. The bootprints he had left in the sand during his approach to the peak and as he had started his walk were still there, something he didn’t even pretend not to be relieved about. If he decided to back out here and now, he’d be able to retrace his steps back to the caravel wreckage.

“That’s it, then,” he said as he came to a stop. “I’ve made it all the way around the peak. Didn’t find any more writing on the walls, and there wasn’t any more temporospatial shifting.” He cracked a wry smile. “Let me tell you right now, that is a sentence I never dreamed I’d ever say. And that’s despite me winning a competition to go ride in a spaceship.”

**Where are you now?**

“Back at that recessed area I saw before. And I am going to do my best not to be thoroughly unsettled by this, but I gotta tell you – it’s gonna be a real uphill battle. Because that recess in the peak wall?”

**Yeah?**

“It’s a doorway.”

**A WHAT?**

“I’m not kidding. And I don’t mean, like, it’s a cave entrance that’s formed naturally in the rock, or anything like that. I literally mean that it’s a doorway. It’s got right angles and everything, and it’s at human scale. Built for someone _exactly_ my size.” He frowned a little. “Huh. I wonder…”

He stepped up alongside the doorway and took his helmet off, holding it in one hand while he compared his height to that of the opening in the peak wall. The top of the doorway was about half a foot above his head. “Oh are you fucking _kidding_ me right now? How is that even possible?”

**What?**

“I probably mentioned at one point that I’m not exactly _short_. I’m something like six foot two, give or take maybe half an inch. Tallest member of my family. Even my _dad_ is shorter than I am, though not by much. If I hadn’t decided to go into science and I was actually _good_ at sports, I might have taken up basketball or something. But anyway – I can’t help but wonder if this doorway was built for me.”

**That can’t be possible.**

“I know it can’t be possible, and yet here we are. That doorway is _exactly_ my size. I just…what the hell do I even _do_ with this information?” He let out a nearly hysterical laugh. “No way in hell am I going through it just yet. I’m just gonna sit here for a little bit and try to collect myself. Pretty sure I’ll have a panic attack if I try it right now.”

**Are you sure going through the doorway is the best idea?**

“Honestly? No, I absolutely do not think it’s the best idea. I am _terrified_.” As he said this he was settling himself down on the ground against the peak, legs stretched out in front of him. “I have never felt so nervous or anxious in all my life. My fucking _goosebumps_ have goosebumps, that’s how much this is freaking me out.” He closed his eyes for a moment. “Gimme a few minutes and then…I dunno. I guess I’ll be ready to go inside.” He swallowed hard. “Or run screaming.”

**Let’s hope it’s not the latter.**

“Yeah, you and me both.”

He tipped his head back and let his eyes drift closed again, and focused on calming himself down. The panic he had been feeling gradually eased, he could feel his heart stop racing, and it got steadily easier to breathe. “Okay, I think I’m good,” he said once he felt like he was calm enough to keep going. “I mean, as good as I’m likely to get. I don’t think I’ll be _completely_ good until I’m home again.”

**Don’t go inside unless you’re absolutely sure.**

“Of course I’m not fucking _sure_. How in the world could I be sure about something like this? For all I know, there’s a giant laser cannon with ‘Jordan Taylor Hanson’ etched into the side of its barrel, and it’ll blow my head off and cauterise the wound the second I step through that door!” He bit back a slightly hysterical laugh. “And you and I both know that would not be one iota crazier than anything else that’s happened today, let alone the last three days.” He eased himself upright and dusted himself off. “But I’ve come this far. I have to do this.”

He moved in front of the doorway, through which he could see a distant light almost beckoning him forward. Any other time he would have been relieved to see a light at the end of the tunnel that lay before him, but right now the sight of it was more than a little unnerving. He resisted the urge to turn tail and run in the opposite direction, and instead took a deep breath. “Right then. Here goes nothing.”


	9. Part One :: Chapter 8

### Chapter 8

The doorway into the peak opened onto a long, nondescript hallway with rock on all sides. “It looks like sandstone,” he commented. “The walls, I mean. I bet if I took my gloves off I could find out for sure. I’m not going to,” he added hurriedly, as if to reassure both himself and Meredith. “That’s probably not the greatest idea on my part. But it’s seriously tempting.”  
  
**Anything else special about it?**  
  
“Nope. It’s pretty ordinary, really. Well, unless you count the fact that the hallway’s at human scale, like the doorway,” he amended. “Which, okay, does actually seem like it’s something worth mentioning.”  
  
**You THINK?**  
  
“Yeah, okay smartass.” He bit back a small grin and kept walking down the hallway, doing his best to ignore the way it steadily grew darker the further he got from the doorway. “Oh, I _really_ don’t like this,” he said as the light from outside finally tapered right off, plunging the hallway into darkness. “I just lost the light from outside and now it’s dark as pitch in here, which _really_ isn’t helping my nerves right now. Really wishing my helmet light still worked.”  
  
**You could crack a glow rod** , Meredith suggested.  
  
“I could,” he agreed. “But I have no idea how much longer I’ll be stuck here on this stupid rock. And once the glow rods I have are gone, that’s it. I need all the light I can get.” He squinted a little at the patch of light that lay at the end of the hallway. “There’s light ahead, distantly, so I’ll aim for it.”  
  
Just as he said this, he heard it – the same scuttling that he’d heard back at the caravel. He swept his gaze up and down the hallway until he saw it – a bunch of little lights heading right for him. “ _Oh holy shit what was that?_ ” he just barely held himself back from yelling – right as _something_ brushed up against his leg.  
  
Something that, when he looked down toward his feet, was glowing a faint, poisonous green.  
  
**What? What just happened?**  
  
“Okay, yes, I know. It’s happened to me before. But it wasn’t this close until now.” A chill settled over him, and he shuddered. “I heard the echo bouncing off the walls before I even saw what it was coming from.” He shifted as close as he could to one of the walls of the hallway, pressing his back into the stone. “And I was looking around, trying to figure out where the fuck the noise was coming from – it was the same scuttling noise I heard back at the caravel – and I saw this green glow right near the floor.”  
  
**Okay, that’s fucking creepy.**  
  
“Yeah, no kidding! It took a second, but then the glow turned into…I swear to you, it looked like a bunch of little lights. No, not lights,” he corrected himself. “They looked like _eyes_. Don’t ask me why I thought they looked like that, I don’t want to think about it more than I have to.” He curled his hands into fists to stop them shaking. “And right as I’m trying to process _that_ , one of…of _whatever_ they are, the fucking thing goes and brushes up against my leg.”  
  
**Did it hurt you?**  
  
He shook his head, even though he knew full well Meredith couldn’t see him. “No, I’m okay. Shaken up, yeah, but it didn’t hurt me.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “It just kinda bounced right off me and kept on running with the rest of those…things, deeper into the mountain.” Out of nothing more than sheer terror tears pricked at his eyes, and he blinked hard to stave them off. “But this means I’m not alone in here, Mere. I liked it _so_ much better when I was alone in here.”  
  
**Follow those…those things.**  
  
“Are you kidding me right now?” Taylor asked almost incredulously. “Like I want to _follow_ them!”  
  
**You want to find out what the hell is going on, right?**  
  
“Yeah, of course I do.”  
  
**Then follow them. It’s probably your best chance of getting anything resembling answers.**  
  
He let out a sigh that was just barely shy of frustrated. Meredith was right – he wasn’t going to get the answers he was looking for, or at the very least something that resembled them, if he didn’t keep on going deeper into the mountain. And that meant following those creatures.  
  
“Okay. Fine.” His helmet went back on, and out of nothing more than instinct he pulled the faceplate down and locked it into place. “This is a bad idea, just so you know.”  
  
**Yes, Taylor, I know.**  
  
“Those…creatures – it feels so weird saying that, definitely not a word I thought I’d be using on this moon – anyway, they went running toward the light. So I guess that’s where I’m going.”  
  
**Be careful. Please.**  
  
Taylor cracked a small smile. “I will.”

* * *

**This makes zero sense.**  
  
“What makes zero sense?” Meredith asked without looking up from one of her class readings. She had worked out how to turn on text-to-speech for the Lifeline app (though it wasn’t something she would use outside of her dorm room) – while she knew that the voice she had picked for Taylor’s messages likely sounded nothing like her friend’s did, she had figured that it was a close enough approximation. It also gave her something to focus on other than assignments for class – with the semester quickly winding down, anything that let her brain take even just the shortest of breaks was a welcome distraction.  
  
**I’ve got light again. Not much of it, but still.**  
  
“But that’s a good thing, right?”  
  
**Normally I’d agree with you, but…why the hell would it get BRIGHTER the deeper you go inside a mountain? There’s just no way that even remotely makes sense.**  
  
He was quiet for a little while, and Meredith went back to her reading. She had just highlighted a particularly interesting paragraph when her phone chimed at her and started reading out a new message from Taylor.  
  
**Unless there were, I don’t know…ELECTRIC LIGHTS in here? What the actual FUCK?**  
  
Meredith almost dropped her tablet on the floor. “Are you shitting me right now?”  
  
**No, I am absolutely not. They’re those old fluorescent light strip thingies. This is…I’m not sure I can even describe this to you. What I wouldn’t give for a working helmet cam right now.** The voice that was currently reading out Taylor’s messages didn’t convey emotion, but Meredith could just about see Taylor giving her a rueful smile. **I-I don’t know what I was expecting to find when I got here, but it sure as hell wasn’t this!**  
  
“You’re going to have to describe it to me _somehow_ ,” Meredith reminded him. “I’m only getting text from you, remember?”  
  
**Okay. I’ll do my best.** He went quiet, and Meredith was sure she could see him running his hands through his hair as he tried to figure out how to describe what he was seeing. **I’m standing in a room – in the interior of a mountain, let’s not forget here. It’s…the best way I can describe it is that it’s a sort of control room. I dunno what exactly it’s controlling, but…I can tell you right now that there’s really no answer to that question that will make either of us feel any better about this whole thing.**  
  
“Maybe it’s monitoring something?” Meredith suggested. “Rather than controlling.”  
  
**Maybe, yeah. Because there’s all these computer systems in banks along the walls. FUNCTIONING computer systems.**  
  
Meredith almost dropped her tablet on the floor. “That should _not_ be possible.”  
  
**I KNOW it shouldn’t be possible, and yet here we are. There’s even brand names I recognise. It’s a kind of mix-and-match patchwork of monitors and CPUs, and there’s even a couple of chairs in front of the computers. Whoever it was that put all this together, they went and poked around in some old starship flight deck and built a fucking workstation. ON A FREAKING MOON.  
**  
“Where did they _find_ all of that?”  
  
**My best guess? Other ships, whether they crashed here or elsewhere.** There was a short pause. **Yeah, this is all definitely salvaged parts from ships. All the computers, the chained-together generators, the wiring…**  
  
Here he trailed off a little. **Oh yeah. That’s the other thing. The wiring.**  
  
“What about it?”  
  
**Just…there’s TONNES of it. It’s all bunched up into a massive bundle, and it all leads out of the computer banks and up through a hole in the ceiling. No idea where it goes from there, because that hole is just barely big enough for that bundle of wires to fit through, and I don’t have anything that I could pick away at the ceiling with. And I don’t have any way of getting up that high, anyway.  
**  
Meredith almost told him to climb up on the workstation to try and reach the wiring, or even try to build something to stand on, but at the very last moment thought better of it. “Check out the computers,” she suggested instead.  
  
**All right. Gimme a sec.**  
  
Seconds stretched out into minutes. Meredith was about to ask if he was okay when a new message popped up on screen.  
  
**This…this is incredible.**  
  
“What is?”  
  
**This screen I’m looking at. It’s displaying a topographical map of this general area. Bit pixelated, and it’s all in green and black, but it’s pretty obvious what I’m looking at. And it’s centred on this peak, inside the giant crater that I just hiked halfway across. I can zoom out and scroll, so if I go…yep, there’s the wreck of the caravel. It shows up as this bright, broken spot against the moonscape.  
**  
“Try and find the _Varia_ ,” Meredith suggested.  
  
**On it. Panning to the south, past the crater and the canyon…and there’s the Varia. Two bright pieces, glowing back at me from the screen.**  
  
Here, Meredith could almost see Taylor shaking his head in disbelief. **This is surreal. Where are these images even COMING from? Is there some sort of satellite up there in space? Like, a whole NETWORK of them?**  
  
“And if there is, how much of the moon is the satellite covering?”  
  
**Yeah, exactly. If I keep scrolling, will I – oh my God.**  
  
“What? What is it?”  
  
**There…there’s another bright green block. Southwest of the Varia crash site. And…oh no. There’s another one.**  
  
At these words, the sinking feeling that Meredith had felt disturbingly often over the past few days returned with a vengeance. “Please don’t tell me there’s more of them.”  
  
**Okay. I won’t.**  
  
“Sweet Jesus.”  
  
**I zoomed out as far as it would go, and…Mere, there’s DOZENS. Dozens of shipwrecks on this moon. I just…how? How is this even POSSIBLE?  
**  
“How many are we talking here?”  
  
**I lost count at thirty. And I still haven’t had a look at the whole surface of this fucking moon yet. Jesus Christ. How many ships have been downed here? And how the hell have we not heard anything about it in the news? This moon is like the fucking Bermuda Triangle of outer space!  
**  
“I honestly don’t know, Tay. I wish I did. Anything else interesting?”  
  
**Yeah, there’s a couple of other monitors. One nearest me is idle.**  
  
“We’re both probably going to regret this, but…” Meredith took a deep, steadying breath. “Wake it up.”

* * *

Out of nothing more than reflex, Taylor braced himself before tapping the spacebar of the keyboard attached to the idle monitor. “Okay, I just nudged it awake, and-” He broke off when he saw what had appeared on the monitor’s screen. “A language option menu? Huh. Not what I was expecting to see.”  
  
**This keeps getting weirder and weirder.**  
  
“You’re telling me. I’m gonna go with ‘English’, since it’s right there at the top. And it’s what I speak.”  
  
**What’s it saying?**  
  
For a few moments, Taylor wasn’t sure how to answer. “I should probably type it,” he replied at last. “It probably won’t make much sense otherwise.” Without really thinking about it, he unlatched his right glove from the right arm of his IEVA suit, worked his hand out of it and shook his fingers out a few times before quickly typing the words on the monitor into his wrist communicator.

**[ ALL SYSTEMS: OPERATIONAL ]  
  
[ BROADCASTING ]  
  
[ TIME TO PULSE: ]**

“And then there’s a sequence of numbers moving so quickly that I can’t read them,” he added as he pulled his glove back on and latched it back into place. “Whatever the ‘TIME TO PULSE’ thing means, this monitor is counting down to it. I can’t tell you that it fills me with any measure of confidence.”  
  
**Me neither.**  
  
“Monitor next to this one is idle too – I’m gonna wake it up.” Another tap of a spacebar, this time on the monitor on the right-hand side of the one counting down, brought up a familiar-looking screen. “This one looks a lot like the proximity alarm I set up back at the caravel. I think it’s a slightly different model, though – different bells and whistles. But I definitely know what I’m looking at, so that’s somewhat reassuring.”  
  
**Is it working?**  
  
“Yeah, it is actually. Which-”  
  
And here he broke off, barely able to believe what he was seeing. “No. No _way_.”  
  
**What are you looking at?**  
  
“On the screen of the proximity alarm, there’s, um…” He swallowed hard. “There’s something moving.”  
  
**What the actual FUCK?**  
  
“I’m not kidding. There’s something outside, moving toward the peak.” A chill settled over him. “Moving toward _me_.”  
  
**What does it look like?**  
  
“I-I know I said this already and dismissed it completely. But I’m absolutely certain this time.” He lifted the faceplate of his helmet and rubbed a gloved hand over his face. “It’s human-shaped.”  
  
**How is that even possible?**  
  
“How is _any_ of this possible? How am I in a computer control room in the centre of a mountain on a moon littered with wrecked spaceships? None of what’s happening to me makes any sense, but it’s happening. _That is a person_. And that person is coming _here_.”  
  
**Stay right where you are. I don’t like this one bit.**  
  
“Yeah. That might be the best plan. Give myself a little while to mentally prepare for this.” Almost as an afterthought, he added, “As if there were any way to mentally prepare for this. Because there’s absolutely no doubt, they’re heading right for where I am.”  
  
**And then what?**  
  
“I don’t know.” He shifted a little in his seat, wishing it was a little more comfortable. “Am I rescued?”  
  
**I hope so.**  
  
“Yeah, me too.” He tucked his hands under his knees and studied the proximity alarm. “I’ve got some time until they get here. Might as well see what else I can do with these computers, hey?”  
  
**Sure, see what’s what.**  
  
“Okay, let’s see what we have here…” He made a show of cracking his knuckles and turned his attention to the monitor that sat to his left. “Oh man, I might’ve just hit paydirt,” he said once he’d woken it up and realised just what he was looking at. “This one’s a sector-wide scanner.” His gaze tracked upward from the monitor to the bundle of wires that led up through the ceiling. “It’s also the one that the majority of the wires seem to be coming out of.”  
  
**What do you think it is?**  
  
“I think those wires are a broadcasting antenna. So that means that this peak, this whole structure…it’s gotta be some sort of broadcasting _tower_. One that’s seated right at the centre of an enormous crater that…I don’t know, maybe it’s a sort of parabolic reflector?”  
  
**It’s a satellite dish.**  
  
Taylor nodded, even though he knew Meredith couldn’t see him. “It’s a satellite dish! An absolutely _massive_ one, at least five miles across. I’d go looking for the premium cable channels if it weren’t for the fact that _my mind is melting right now_.”  
  
**So if it’s broadcasting…**  
  
“And it is, and I have access to the broadcasting centre – which I do – then every second I’m not sending out an SOS is a second I’m wasting. Gimme a minute to see if I can dig into things.”  
  
He didn’t waste another moment. The second he finished speaking he muted his communicator and started typing away at the keyboard of the broadcast monitor, fingers flying over its keys like they were possessed. Somehow he managed to hit on the keyboard shortcut that interrupted the feed, and typed out a quick SOS message.  
  
**MAYDAY. MAYDAY. MAYDAY. STARSHIP VARIA CRASHED ON UNKNOWN MOON. TWO SURVIVORS, ONE CRITICALLY INJURED – CAPTAIN RENEE AYA AND CADET TAYLOR HANSON.  
**  
“Why don’t I know what SOS is in anything other than English?” he asked himself as he read his message one last time. “Guess I’d better hope that’s what they speak.” He hit the Enter key to send his message, then the keyboard shortcut that had let him break into the feed. The scanner display came back onscreen almost as soon as he lifted his hands off the keyboard.  
  
“I did it!” he cheered triumphantly once he had unmuted his communicator. “I managed to interrupt the feed and send an SOS, then I got the feed broadcasting again. If anyone stumbles through this sector – or hell, maybe even just brushes up against it, I don’t know how powerful the signal is – they’ll know that I’m here. Even if I’m not totally sure where ‘here’ is.”  
  
He let out an almost-relieved laugh. “This is great, Mere. In spite of all this weirdness, I actually have hope for the first-”  
  
With those words, the bottom fell right out of the world – and Taylor fell right along with it.

* * *

**[ communication interrupted ]  
  
[ date/time stamp invalid ]  
  
[ searching… ]**

The terror that Meredith felt when she lost contact with Taylor was all-encompassing. The cold knot of fear that she had felt right before she had found out the truth about what had happened to her friend returned in full measure, and she found herself praying to any deity that would listen that Taylor was okay.  
  
Almost as soon as he dropped out of contact, her prayers were answered.

**[ reacquiring signal ]  
  
[ establishing connection ]  
  
[ receiving message ]**

**-is happening? Hello? HELLO?**  
  
“Tay, it’s okay,” Meredith reassured Taylor. “I’m here.”  
  
**Oh thank goodness. You have no idea how glad I am to hear that. Or read. Whatever. Because for a minute there, you weren’t. Or maybe I wasn’t.**  
  
“It was like ten seconds on my side.”  
  
**It felt a whole lot longer than that for me. I don’t know what that looked like for you, but from where I’m standing – okay, let’s be honest, from where I’m crumpled into a nervous heap on one of these salvaged command deck chairs – there was this weird sort of humming noise that was sudden and fucking EVERYWHERE, and my vision started to go a little swimmy. I had just enough time to look at the monitors, and I saw that the countdown was all zeroed out. And then it was like the whole world just…fell apart.  
**  
“Jesus,” Meredith whispered.  
  
**It was like everything moved away from me and I moved away from it, simultaneously and instantaneously. And before I even knew it was happening, it was over. Everything was back to normal – and believe me, I use that word VERY loosely.  
**  
Here, Meredith was sure she could see Taylor scrubbing a hand across his face. **I think I just experienced what happened when I was outside the peak, and it shimmered and disappeared – except this time, I was INSIDE the peak. And I shimmered and disappeared along with it.**  
  
“Do you feel okay?”  
  
**I…guess so? Like I said, it happened so fast. I didn’t really have time to react. If I stopped to consider what just happened to me, I’d probably end up with motion sickness.** There was a pause, almost as if Taylor was considering this. **Can you even GET motion sickness from shifting out of phase with reality?**  
  
“I have no idea, and I really don’t ever want to find out.”  
  
**I do NOT blame you.** Another pause. **My communicator has an ‘invalid date slash time stamp’ message. So what date and time WAS it reading? This is…it’s freaky as fuck.**  
  
“Yeah, no kidding.”  
  
**Oh, hey, I’ve got some news to report. Not entirely sure where it lands on the whole ‘good news bad news’ spectrum, though.  
**  
“Lay it on me,” Meredith said. Almost out of reflex, she braced herself – if the last couple of days had taught her anything, when Taylor said that he had news it was rarely anything that could be considered _good_.  
  
**Okay, well, I’m not exactly sure what to make of this. Best case scenario? I’m about to get really, REALLY rescued. Because where there used to be one human shape approaching my location…well, now there’s four.  
**  
“Stay right where you are,” Meredith said immediately, echoing her earlier words.  
  
**Yeah, absolutely. I am DEFINITELY gonna stay here. If this IS a rescue team, and I’m really hoping that’s what it is, I can wait a few extra minutes to get rescued. I’ve made it this far already. And if it’s stragglers from another downed ship…they might be crazed from wandering through the desert for days, or maybe even weeks. I mean, I’ve only been wandering since, what, day before yesterday, and I think I’m about half-crazed myself.  
**  
“I think you’re about as sane as I am.”  
  
**Thanks. I think.**  
  
“Seriously. My mom had me tested.”  
  
Meredith could almost hear Taylor burst out laughing at this. **I needed that. Thank you.**  
  
“No problem.”  
  
**Anyway, if they’re stranded like me, I figure I’d rather wait and see how they react to this place. Make sure they know I’m a stranger here too.  
**  
A thought popped into Meredith’s head just then – one that she hadn’t even wanted to consider. “And what if it’s neither? What if they’re not rescuers _or_ survivors?”  
  
**Then I sure as hell don’t want to deliver myself into their arms.**  
  
“Excellent logic, I’d say.”  
  
**I thought so. I’ve got absolutely not precedent for this kind of situation, as I imagine most people don’t, so it’s reassuring to see someone else telling me that what I’m saying isn’t complete nonsense.  
**  
There was more quiet after this, almost as if Taylor was intent on studying the monitors before him. **Here’s the thing, though** , he continued at last. **As weird as it sounds, I can’t shake the possibility that these humans could be…well, NOT human. Like they’re some sort of native creature that sees me as a threat. Or worse, as a meal.** Almost as an afterthought, he added, **Not that I’d make much of a meal. I was skinny as hell before I went on this mission, and I’m probably even skinnier now.**  
  
“I’d really rather not think about you getting eaten, thanks.”  
  
**Sorry. It’s totally unrealistic, though – even I know that. This moon hasn’t exactly given me much reason to believe it can support life. I haven’t seen any evidence of water – no rivers, no ponds, no clouds. And no vegetation either.**  
  
“Breathable air, though.”  
  
**There is that** , he conceded. **The atmosphere IS breathable – for me, at any rate. Primarily nitrogen, according to my suit, but there’s enough oxygen that my brain and my lungs are happy, and I don’t have to rely on my suit’s oxygen tank to breathe. And there’s next to zero carbon dioxide, so that’s good.**  
  
“What about those creatures you keep seeing though?”  
  
**I didn’t imagine those either. I KNOW I didn’t. But they were small. Like, inches and ounces small. Whatever’s approaching the peak right now…they’re as big as I am.**  
  
“They might still be people,” Meredith offered hopefully.  
  
**But on the other hand, they might not be. And that’s what’s keeping me from rushing out there with open arms.  
**  
Meredith could almost hear Taylor letting out a sigh after this. **I’m just gonna settle in and get comfortable. Or as comfortable as I can get, because right now I am about as unsettled and uncomfortable as I have ever been in my life.**  
  
“Keep me updated, yeah?”  
  
**Always, Mere.**

* * *

It was another quiet night on the _White Star_. So quiet in fact that when the message came through on the ship’s transceiver, its chime made Mari almost fall out of her chair. She pulled her feet down off the nav computer and set her tablet to one side, and pulled the message up on its screen.  
  
The _second_ she fully registered what it said, she quickly pressed a button on her wrist communicator. “Captain?”  
  
“ _Yes, Mari?_ ”  
  
Mari looked back at the transceiver just briefly. “We just received a message. I think you should get up here.”  
  
“ _On my way._ ”  
  
It didn’t take long for the captain to make her way up to the cockpit. “What do you have for me, Mari?” Elaina asked as she settled into a seat next to Mari.  
  
“Do you remember the ship that went missing two years ago? The _Varia_?”  
  
“Of course.” Everyone in the Jupiter Mining Corporation knew about the _Varia_ – about the mystery surrounding its disappearance just five weeks into its journey, with the loss of all crew members. The whole solar system knew about it.  
  
Without another word, Mari gestured to the transceiver’s screen and its message, and the captain leaned forward to read it. “Where exactly did this come from?” she asked as she scanned the message.  
  
“Coordinates place it somewhere in the region of Tau Ceti VI.”  
  
“Which is where the _Varia_ was headed when it vanished,” Elaina realised. “He’s been there all this time?”  
  
“Seems that way,” Mari replied with a slight shrug.  
  
Elaina considered the message for a few moments. “How are we doing for supplies?”  
  
Instead of answering right away, Mari set her fingers to flying across the keyboard of one of the cockpit’s other computers. “Things will be tight until we get back home,” she replied finally, “but we can spare it.”  
  
“All I need to know.” Elaina reached over and clapped Mari on the shoulder. “All right, Mari. Let’s go rescue him.”


End file.
